Cyprian Kamil Norwid - POLISH POETRY UNITES

Polish Poetry Unites is a new video series for anyone interested in literature, history and reading. In each episode Edward Hirsch, a distinguished American poet, and the president of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, will introduce a celebrated Polish poet to American audiences.

Edward Hirsch, poet, and president of the Guggenheim Foundation, introduces American audiences to Cyprian Kamil Norwid with these words: „Norwid is an extremely interesting Polish poet. It’s really a shame that no one really knows him in our country. He’s one of the most important 19th Century Polish poets.“

Hirsch later adds a personal remark: “I like to think of him because my office is in midtown and he worked just a couple of blocks away at Bryant Park, as a graphic artist,“ he says, referring to Norwid’s work as a graphic artist on the 1853 Catalogue from the World Fair, which took place at the Crystal Palace, a five minute walk from the Guggenheim Foundation office. The image of the Crystal Palace is shown in the film. The actual Palace burned down a few years later.

Norwid spent almost two years in the United States. Hirsch comments that his life might have turned out differently if he had stayed and not returned to Paris to pursue his dream of fighting against Russia for Polish freedom in the Crimean War. His dream of defending his homeland, however, never materialized due to his poor health.

He wrote the poem, To Citizen John Brown around that same time.

“I think partly because of his quest for liberty, partly because he had lived in the United States that he wrote a remarkable poem for John Brown. It’s called To Citizen John Brown,” says Hirsch. “Other European intellectuals responded to John Brown… but Norwid really wrote the best poem about John Brown, and it speaks to us because it speaks to the ongoing necessity of resistance.”

The Norwid episode was filmed at the poet’s birthplace home, in the village of Głuchy, near Warsaw, Poland. The original copy of the 1853 World Fair’s catalogues with Norwid’s illustrations also appear in the film, as well as many originals of his graphics and manuscripts from the Archives of the Museum of Literature in Warsaw.

The Warsaw Archives lack the manuscripts of poems, which Norwid wrote on his deathbed. Apparently, Norwid wrote 10 hours a day for months before his death. Sadly, no one ever read his final poems. The manuscripts were burnt by workers of the homeless shelter run by nuns in Paris where the great Polish Poet died in 1862.

“We don’t know what these poems are,“ says Ed Hirsch, “I like to think of them, though… and I like to think that they’d be odes to liberty, because most of his work, in my opinion is a quest for freedom. I think this longing for freedom, this ideal of freedom, which is deep in Norwid’s work, is dear to American culture and to the dream of American poetry.“

The second part of the Norwid episode is a short documentary film, featuring Father Maxim from Franciscan order in Toruń, Poland, in which he talks about his life in the context of Norwid’s poem: Fatum.

Hirsch introduces the second part of the episode by saying:

“I hope you enjoy the film. There is a religious element in Norwid’s work but I’m very struck in the film that a priest finds so much freedom and transcendental spirit in Norwid’s poem about fate, and to me it shows a kind of deep human longing for freedom.“

From the Producers of the series:

In March 2022 when thousands of Ukrainians are returning home from Poland and anywhere else to fight Russia, Norwid’s longing for liberty, regained a new actuality, it resonates with us with a new, tragically vivid energy.

Moderator: Edward Hirsch
Director: Ewa Zadrzyńska
Cinematography: Jacek Mierosławski
Editor: Anna Jędrzejewska
Executive Producer: Bartek Remisko