Zuzanna Ginczanka
The poet and director of the Polish Institute in Rome, Jarosław Mikołajewski presents a collection of poetry by Zuzanna Ginczanka, the short-lived star of a pre-war Poland. The Italian title of the volume is Un viavai di brumose apparenze (A parade of misty appearances) and it was translated from the original by Alessandro Amenta and released in a bilingual edition by Austeria in 2011
The Wednesday presentation begins at 6 pm at Turin’s Palazzo Graneri della Roccia and it is organised by the Circolo dei Lettori (Circle of Readers).The collection is a bilingual Polish-Italian edition released by the Kraków-based Austeria publishing house. Zuzanna Ginczanka was a Polish poet of Jewish descent, and she made her official debut at the age of 19 within the legendary Skamander circle. Her first collection was entitled O Centaurach (On the Centaurs) and it was relased by Przeworski in 1936. It turned out to be the only selection of poems to be published during the young poet’s short life.
Zuzanna Ginczanka was born in 1917 in Kiev and soon emmigrated with her parents to the Polish multi-ethnic town of Równe following the soviet October Revolution. She began writing poetry at the age of 10. Encouraged by the Polish poet Julian Tuwim she took part in a poetry competition of the Wiadmości Literackie magazine in 1934. The teenage writer received an honourable mention in the competition and began to regularly cooperate with the Skamander literary group’s paper in 1935. After completing school, she took up pedagogical studies and moved to Warsaw. She frequently attended the famous Mała Ziemiańska, a venue where all of Poland’s significant literary figures spent their time. Among her friends was Witold Gombrowicz.
As World War II broke out, she moved to Lviv where she cooperated with the Association of Soviet Writers of the Ukraine. She published her own works, as well as the poems by other authors which she translated into Polish. After the Nazis invaded and occupied Lviv in June 1941, Ginczanka spent two years in hiding. In the years 1941-43, she wrote one of her most notable works entitled Non Omnis Moriar. She recorded the name of the owned of house owner, who first offered Ginczanka refuge and hid her away, and then gave the Jewish poet away to the Nazis. In 1943 Ginczanka fled to Kraków, and in 1944 she was arrested and shot by the Gestapo.
Jarosław Mikołajewski wrote about Ginczanka
The back of the cover of Ginczanka’s Przeworski editon boast a list of names that proove the rank the young poet - only 19 year old! - alread had at the time: Hemar, Karpiński, Słonimski, Tuwim, Wierzyński. (...) Ginczanka was such a figure before the war! (...) I would not be able to separate the fascination that her beauty and maturity aroused on the one hand from the awe for her poetry on the other. I think that she function more as a persona that a poet, although perhaps the fact that she was a poet and an excellent one, too, didn’t require calling into question
Alessandro Amenta is a translator and lecturer in slavic literature at the Tor Vergata University. He became interested in the poetry of Ginczanka in 2004. In 2008, he published a text on her works in the eSamizdat magazine and also released translations of her poems in the Charade magazine.
The meeting takes place on Wednesday, 18th of April, 2012 at 6 pm.
Circolo dei Lettori
Palazzo Graneri della Roccia
via Bogino 9, Torino
Source: www.istitutopolacco.it, press release