Clean and Bare: the Poetry of Tadeusz Różewicz
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Tadeusz Różewicz’s poetry is what is not there, and how this absence operates on two crucial levels, thematically and stylistically. As a young man, Różewicz was sent to fight in World War II and came home a poet who could not write. His experiences of human suffering in wartime produced a profound distrust of words and the “poetic” ornamentation that could distract from the severity of his topic. They lead him in two distinct directions. First, he “cleaned” his language of almost all rhetorical devices and developed a tone so direct, so honest, so vulnerable that most readers instinctively trust him. Second, he started to write about poetry, asking questions about the process of writing. In other words, he’s focused on the what to write about but also on the how. This becomes a crucial focal point for him, because he feels a constant responsibility towards the victims of war, the dead. In an untitled poem from 1957 he begins:
The dead have remembered
our indifference
The dead have remembered
our silence
The dead have remembered
our wordsThe dead see our snouts
laughing from ear to ear
The dead see
our bodies rubbing against each other
The dead see our hands
poised for applause
Tadeusz Różewicz: Selected Poems. (Translated with an introduction by Adam Czerniawski)