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| POET'S CORNER Leopold Staff (1878-1957) Leopold Staff was one of the most recognized Polish poets of the first half of the 20th century. He was awarded honorary doctorates by both Warsaw University and Jagiellonian University in Cracow. Staff studied law and philosophy at Lviv University at the turn of the century and belonged to a student poetry group known as the Planetarians, so named because they had their heads in the clouds. In 1901, Staff's first poetry collection was published, entitled Sny o potędze (Dreams of Power), and firmly established him as a poetic tour de force. Leopold Staff lived his literary life to the fullest, being in his time an editor, a poet, a dramatist and a prolific translator. He was also a notable patron of the Skamander poetic movement, which experienced its heyday in the 1920s. Staff lived in Warsaw during Nazi occupation and took part in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. After the war, he continued to live and work in Warsaw. The longevity of his career partly explains his broad and dynamic literary development. He achieved in his poetry an erudite and personal exploitation of classical literature, but his poetry is also infused with strong Christian and philosophical ideals. He was particularly influenced by Nietzsche. His early poetry dabbled with themes of decadence, fashionable in European poetry at the time, while his later poetry attempted to capture the essence of Polish culture and national identity. Staff produced numerous books of poetry, the last of which, entitled Dziewięć Muz (The Nine Muses), was published posthumously in 1958. This week's poem is unusual, offering strange syntax and a bizarre feast of imagery and didacticism. Perhaps the early tremors of love are indeed revolutionary in the changes they bring to a person's life. Maybe the arousal of amorous passion does exile us permanently from the happy ambivalence that existed before the fatal encounter. The significance of the gray, dry poppies in the final verse is unclear, but the whispering obituary is certainly a strong image that denounces inaction and makes a strong case to all those fearful, closeted lovers to act on their feelings and profess their love, whatever the outcome. Better to suffer rejection than to have to look back and ask, "What if ...?" YOU MAY LOVE You may love and yet never know, never yearn. In the wake of an accidental meeting, Shaking hands, hasty farewells or warm greetings. Taking your leave with peace of mind-no return... But the next day, as the moment fades and while You randomly ponder this and that, there unfolds A burgeoning heartfelt passion; something gold. You suddenly feel in your heart-into exile! You may reflect, rationalize, in vain debate And filter the past with sieved memories So as to find something in it, a life aglow. But sadness looms only in gray, dry poppies, Like ashes on an obituary whispering, "too late." You may indeed be in love but never, ever know. Introduction and translation by Barry Keane |
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