POET'S CORNER
Bolesław Leśmian (1877-1937)
30 November 1997

Bolesław Leśmian was born in Warsaw in 1877, a date that is actually disputed. His family roots were strongly of the Eastern European Jewish intelligentsia. He spent much of his youth in Kiev and studied Classical Philology and Law at Kiev University, becoming involved in many different artistic circles. His Polish patriotism, as demonstrated through his poetry and theatrical presentations, eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment for six weeks. In 1901 he left Ukraine to return to Warsaw. Three years later he set out on a journey through Europe, settling for a short time in Paris,, where he met and married the painter Zofia Chylińska, by whom he had two daughters.

In 1911, he co-founded the experimental Artystyczny Theater in Warsaw. At the outbreak of World War I, he moved to Łódź to run its Polski Theater. On finishing his tenure as director of the theater company, he became Łódź's commissioner for oaths. In 1922, he moved to the rural town of Zamość where he remained until 1935. Leśmian achieved moderate success in his lifetime, particularly with his poetry collection entitled Ląka (Meadow), published in 1920. Unfortunately he was not fully appreciated by the literary establishment of the day and was made a member of the Polish Literary Academy only in 1933. His poetry however, underwent a popular revival in the 1950s and today he is regarded by many as the greatest Polish poet of this period.

Leśmian's poetry concerns itself a great deal with the journey of the soul, but its strongest element is his presentation of ideas within the natural world. This week's poem presents a seemingly innocent lovers' rendezvous in a natural setting, but the lovers' disquiet is at odds with nature's serenity: "declaring their love in a hushed voice." Their perturbing departure from the garden and each other reflects upon man's inner conflict in a natural and harmonious world, whereas their mysterious and tragic deaths pose the existential conundrum of death and nothingness, placing human existence in a rather hapless light.

Two People


Often a song sings in my soul, sad and forlorn,
For two people, who so yearned to be lovers sworn.
In a garden declaring their love in hushed voice,
They fled from each other, their needs leaving no choice...


Never did the lovers meet, both being to blame;
Time moved ceaselessly on, never staying the same.
But they'd love again: reaching for a flower once more,
They fell ill like no one had in the world before.


Under a sycamore, two beds, two shadows lay,
Under a sycamore, two lovers passed away
A hapless death charade, with neither taint nor sin,
No happy tears or smiles, or loving glow within...


Their red lips faded to a cold purple of death,
Such a pallid paleness the world had never met.
They had desired to love on the eternal side,
But love had ceased to exist, it too had died.


And lastly on bended knees at their luckless threshold
They prayed in hope, but there was no God to behold.
Their wills remained to Spring and to Summer's eve,
Bent on life: but no more was there an Earth to receive.



Introduction and translation by Barry Keane

Reproduced with
permission from
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