Andrzej Babiński
Andrzej Babiński (1938–1984) was one of the so-called cursed poets, Edward Stachura’s friend. He spent his childhood years, which coincided with World War Two, in the countryside in the Białystok area, but his literary life was bound to Poznań.
During 1957–61, he studied philosophy in the psychology department of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin. He dropped out when he was nearing the end of his 5-year-long master’s degree studies. Babiński’s first poems are dated 1954. He would initially publish his works in the press (Poezja [Poetry], Radar, Nurt [Current] and student journals). During 1972–74, he co-edited the Poznań-based Nowy Dzwonek Poranny (The New Morning Bell).
He was friends with Edward Stachura, Ryszard Milczewski-Bruno, and Wincenty Różański. Babiński took Sted’s death very hard. It was to his friend that he dedicated one of his best-known poems, ‘Nad Grobem Stachury’ (Over Stachura’s Grave).
In 1957, he made his debut with the poetry volume Z Całej Siły (With Full Force), for which a year later he was awarded the ‘Peleryna’ Prize in the Gdańsk ‘Red Rose’ Competition. In 1977, he published another poetry volume, Znicze (Votive Candles), awarded in 1978 with the New Gallery in Poznań Medal. He was the winner of the IV Day of Poetry Competition (Warsaw 1969), the Poetry About Poznań and Greater Poland Tournament (1975), the Zielona Waza (Green Vase, 1976), and the competition ‘U Źródeł Nowego Wieku’ (At the Sources of the New Century, 1977).
Babiński suffered from a mental illness (paranoid schizophrenia) which prevented him from developing freely in terms of a career. Visions of disaster constitute a frequent theme of his poems. In them, the author attempts to face death and rejection, as shown, for instance, in the following 1969 poem:
Cut off and collapsed with the metropolis underground
I shout SOS in vain
I shout with the voice of a madman
No one comes to the rescue…
[‘***’ (‘Tylko Mi Ziemi Całej…’)]
Ten years later, after the death of Stachura, he wrote: ‘I’ve lost a friend. I’m now a roadside stone. I don’t want to be one. I’ll put the whole earth underneath him’.
Babiński’s works are quite a demanding read since they require deep focus and increased alertness on the reader’s part. Some of his poems are imbued with romanticism and subtle eroticism:
Dew rainbows on nasturtiums
Birds flock to your garden
Flowers bloomed as you looked at me, smiling
In the silence of your eyes so tender […]
When away, you’re the only one to know my address
And I depart on no journey without your picture with me
You lit a shared star for us with your eyes
And once again I have a doorstep, a door handle, and you for longer.
[‘***’ (‘Rosa na Nasturcjach Się Stęcza’)]
Andrzej Babiński died by suicide, falling from the Marchlewski Bridge in Poznań (now the Queen Jadwiga Bridge) onto the concrete embankment. The investigation ruled out the possibility of murder.
The District Attorney eventually claimed that ‘[h]is suicide was undoubtedly the result of the accumulation of two factors, namely, mental illness and an artistic attitude’.
Wincenty Różański
Wincenty Bolesław Różański (1938–2009), also known as Witek, was a poet who supported himself financially exclusively through poetry writing. He was friends with Edward Stachura, who would call him ‘Son of the Goddess’ and make him into one of the characters in his novel Cała Jaskrawość.
Witek was the son of Cezary, an insurrectionist during the Greater Poland uprising and a gardener in a sanatorium in Ludwików, and Józefa née Frąckowiak. The Różańskis had five children. Their oldest son became an architect and a visual artist, the second one – a professor of electronics. One of Wincenty’s sisters is the painter Joanna Różańska.
Wincenty Różański graduated a technical school of bookselling. After his maturity exam, he took up Polish philology at Adam Mickiewicz University, but he never graduated. Obligatory military service cost him his health; upon returning from his unit, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Subsequent hospital stays only contributed to the reinforcement of the illness. He took hard the introduction of martial law and then the death of his mother.
He made his debut in 1958 with the poem ‘Bohema’ (Bohemianism), published in the joint Column for the Young Poznań poets on the pages of Głos Wielkopolski (Voice of Greater Poland). He belonged to the literary group Wiatraki (Windmills, 1956–59) and Wiry (Whirlpools) at the Association of Rural Youth (1965–74). In the years 1961–67, he worked as a warehouse worker at the construction of the Turoszów Powerhouse, as a bookseller in Dom Książki (House of Books), as an entrant (a performer with no diploma) in the Actor and Puppet Theatre, and as a librarian in the Municipal Public Library. From 1967, he received a disability pension, making some extra money as a writer to top up the modest benefits.
He joined the ranks of outsiders debuting prior to the New Wave by publishing his volume Wiersze o Nauce Nawigacji Między Kamieniami (Poems about Learning to Navigate Between Stones, 1968). He later published almost twenty-five such volumes. His poetry was a passionate combination of life experience and wisdom with a play of linguistic meanings and imagination, a pairing of naïveté and finesse, simplicity and artistry, folklore and symbol.
In 1993, Tadeusz Żukowski shot a TV film about Różański’s life and work, titled Będziemy Piękniejsi (We Shall Be More Beautiful). Four years later, Piotr Kępiński and Andrzej Sikorski published the book Któż To Opisze, Któż To Uciszy: Rozmowy z Wincentym Różańskim (Who Will Describe This, Who Will Silence This: Conversations with Wincenty Różański), which included conversations with the poet, his memoirs, correspondence and poems.
He published his pieces in literary journals such as Twórczość (Literary Work), Literatura (Literature), Nurt (Current), Czas Kultury (Time of Culture), Topos and Gazeta Malarzy i Poetów (Newspaper of Painters and Poets). They were translated into Spanish, Bulgarian, Greek, German, French and English, among others. His poetry expresses delight with the commonplace, and he would always say that ‘one writes the way one breathes’. The poetry he wrote was surreal; he didn’t succumb to literary trends. ‘As the world seems mercilessly institutionalised, he remains personal to the core’, wrote Tadeusz Żukowski in the afterword to a collection titled Wędrujemy do Szeol (Wandering to Sheol).
In 2003, he was taken ill and lost his speech. From then on, he was under the constant care of his wife and doctors. He spent the entirety of his adult life in Poznań, where he also died on 3 January 2009 as a result of a tragic accident.