In 1963, Wat finally chose the status of an immigrant and decided to remain in the West. He published in the Parisian Kultura magazine and was sometimes invited as a guest by the Polish Radio Free Europe radio station. In December of the same year, the Wat family left France and moved to Berkeley, California. Wat became a scholarship holder at the Center for Slavic and East European Studies. He began to feel better, but it was only a temporary improvement. By 1964 the writer was already seriously thinking about suicide. His illness progressed and Wat had difficulty writing. He did not feel good as a writer. That is why – partly for therapeutic reasons – he started recording his memories and conversations with Czesław Miłosz on a tape recorder. This is how the famous biographical story My Century was written and finally published in 1977.
In July 1965, Wat returned to France. Here, he continued to work and elaborate upon his memories. Among other things, he wrote Sheets in the Wind.
In 1966 and 1967, the Wat family went to Majorca. Here the poet felt much better and could prepare his final – as it turned out – volume of poems titled Dark Trinket.
Finally, what the writer had thought and talked about so many times happened: on July 29, 1967, Alexander Wat committed suicide.
Wat’s poems are difficult. The poet drew on the complicated symbolism of various traditions and periods, wrote in a language full of references and allusions, built complex metaphors and changed styles and poetics. His works are highly meaningful, but the semantics of Wat’s poems also depend on internal tensions and dissonances, which the poet uses constantly, looking for a form for his lyrical experience.
Wat’s biography and work are an example of the tragic fate of the 20th-century artist, who, entangled in the left-wing avant-garde, eventually becomes a victim of the system he built.
Selected works
- Ja z Jednej Strony i Ja z Drugiej Strony Mego Mopsożelaznego Piecyka (Me on the One Side and Me on the Other Side of my Pug-iron Heater), 1920
- Lucifer Unemployed. Stories, 1927
- Loth’s Escape (novel), fragments, 1949
- Poems, 1957
- Mediterrenean Poems, 1962
- My Century. Spoken Diary, 1977
- Dark Trinkey (poems), 1968
Selected writings:
- Świat Na Haku i Pod Kluczem: Eseje (World on the Hook and under Lock and Key), 1985
- Dziennik bez Samogłosek (Diary Without Vowels), 1986
- Ucieczka Lotha: Proza (Loth’s Escape: Prose), 1988
- Selected Poems, 1987
Originally written in Polish by Wojciech Kaliszewski, December 2006, translated by PG, July 2019