The poem by Marcin Kurek was published in Warsaw, 2010 as the second volume of the Zeszyty Literackie poetry series. It was awarded by the Kościelski Foundation in Switzerland in the autumn of the same year
The poem is the author's second debut. He began his career with the piece Monolog wieczorny / Evening Monologue (Wrocław 1997, OKIS), but spent the next decade or so publishing solely translations and books on history and literature.
The jury called the book a "multilayered, stylistically rich piece stirs a number of topics in a single flash of memory and in a metaphysical perspective: friendships, journeys, moments of joie de vivre. This all is written in a sparse, precise and modern style, full of references to the great spirits of literature".
The poem bears the motto from Mickiewicz's Upiór / Ghost ("Serce ustało..." / "The heart has stopped..."). This can be viewed as a sign of the author's ambitions as well as an outline of his frame of reference, not just literary but also situational. On the plot level you get a story about the protagonist - who you would like to equate with the author - being poisoned by water drunk out of the bottle. A twig of a poisonous ornamental plant, the title oleander, came in the bottle from the Mediterranean.
Expecting death to come soon, the protagonist measures his fate against the fates of the great Polish poets, Herbert and Miłosz, who have departed in the recent years. He makes self-mocking comments: "Czy można umrzeć w równie głupi sposób: / otruty wodą z plastikowej butelki, / do której wczoraj wstawiono / uciętą gałązkę?" // "Can you die in an equally foolish way: / poisoned by water from a plastic bottle, / in which yesterday one put / a cut-off twig?".
The poem's time is dual. On the one hand it aims to halt the current moment, as in the Mexican poet's David Huerta's Prayer which was translated by Kurek. There the moment "grows like yellow light / of the sun and flaming lemons / - and tastes like the sea, like the loved hands, / it smells like the street in Paris, / where we were happy". On the other hand - as in the fragment of Robert Lowell's poem (translated into Polish by Piotr Sommer), which was paraphrased in Kurek's piece - it aims to "give recollection the eye of a microscope" in order to accurately see and show the moments chosen from memory. This dual perspective allows to create a peculiar distance towards the moments recalled and, at the same time, a distance towards the protagonist himself - who every now and then resembles the characters from Fredro's comedies.
The cultural background is dual, too. On the one hand you see numerous references to the luminaries of Polish literature, while on the other a major role is played both by the embellished classical culture (an intriguing reversal of the "grand voyage" topos: the protagonist does not head to but returns from the South, bypassing the Alps in a hurry) as well as contemporary Western culture. Hence the memories of the Granada meetings with the poet and painter Hans Vlek (born in 1947) - he lives both in Spain and in Holland - besides the numerous references to the American bard Tom Waits.
In its formal aspect Oleander seems to fit the context of British and American 20th century poetry. Kurek alludes to the poems of T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and John Ashbery, but this does not make him their imitator. His poem is full of original images and evocative scenes, such as the vision of Iosif Brodsky's body which leaves the San Michele island-cemetery and drifts - perhaps toward the favoured Fondamenta degli incurabili? Or maybe it is recovered "gdzieś w ciemnym ujściu / rzeki, w innych morzach" // "somewhere in the dark mouth / of a river, in different seas"?
Oleander has a hidden layer, too. It is no accident the author at one point claims "Numerologia nie daje ci pisać" / "Numerology does not let you write", and Mickiewicz's "forty-four" is perversely linked with the number of candles "na osiem dni Chanuki" / "for the eight days of Hanukkah". Mentioning the dreidel ("srebrne nitki wirują jak drejdel" / "silver threads whirl like the dreidel") is also an allusion to the Jewish holiday. The Hebrew letters placed on its sides can mean both nothing and everything, or half, or a coin. A whole range of possibilities of life and fate.
Oleander is a book to be re-read. You can patiently untangle the quotes and allusions with which the poem is filled; but you can also savour its sensual side, linked to nature (birds, bugs, trees) and sensations of the body. Overall, the poem is written in an unostentatious way, it is light and full of humour.
The author wrote the following about Oleander:
I wanted to take the clarity of the text a level higher, to make it appear in the seemingly simple sentences. The narrative is drawn from a number of perspectives: from the point of view of the person writing the poem here and now, and from the point of view of the person who makes his journey a couple of years earlier, poisons himself and thinks he is dying. The perspective of various historical moments is also there; both persons try to immerse themselves in them. When I began writing I realised that I did not remember much, that memory works likes a machine which continuously records something new on old tape. I finally understood that there were certain periods I almost entirely denied. Thus writing became a construction of identity on a personal and cultural level.
- Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało talks with Marcin Kurek in "Ile kosztuje słowo do Polski?" / "How Much is a Word to Poland?", Gazeta Wyborcza, October 12, 2010.
A text message sent on the last Saturday of September, 2010 informing Kurek that he had won the Kościelski Prize found him with his wife in the middle of their journey to Spain, in a French town Brie-Comte-Robert, standing next to the house where Czesław Miłosz had finished his only novel, The Issa Valley. A symbolic link was thus created: the message about the prize overlapped "wiadomość o śmierci Czesława Miłosza" / "the information on Czesław Miłosz's death", which opens Kurek's poem. "W tamtą sobotę" / "On that Saturday" found the poet in front of Gombrowicz's house in a French town, Vence.
Multimedia:
Marcin Kurek reads fragments of his poem Oleander: www.vimeo.com/14992661
Author: Jan Zieliński, October 2010. Translated by: Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer, October 2010.
- Marcin Kurek
Oleander
Fundacja Zeszytów Literackich, Warsaw 2010
115 x 170, 68 pp., paperback
ISBN: 978-83-60046-12-8
www.zeszytyliterackie.pl