Poetry by Joanna Mędroszkiewicz – on the 10th anniversary of death
In the volume “Green Island” ( Kraków, 2012 ) Joanna Mądroszkiewicz will find verses filled with longing for Poland, a subtle synthesis of music and poetry, and there are besides dramatic poems about “the country, which in the hearts of centuries lasted”. And there are besides poems, dedicated to the victims of deportation (the “freezed rivers of Siberia”, p.59), yet the Smolenian slaughter. The author is an excellent violinist, besides a poet, and has lived on emigration in Austria since the 1980s, touring in Vienna or Salzburg, as well as in many European countries. Her debut at the National Philharmonic ( 1977) was enthusiastically assessed by Kazimierz Wiłkomirski: “...in the field of violin virtuosity Joanna Mądroszkiewicz is simply a completely unique phenomenon. Her method skills seem to have no limits, and the strength of the experience of the process of music, resource and variety of means of expression attest to the extraordinary sensitivity to sound beauty in its infinite characters" (The Music Movement,01/1977). Joanna's musical successes can be written much, in her repertoire there are over 40 violin concerts of the most celebrated composers or recordings of all Bach's sonatas and solo parts, highly appreciated by reviewers. In 2005, she besides received the Vienna City Award for Best Interpretations of Mozart's Works. At the same time, he promotes Polish music, and her recordings of Szymanowski or Wieniawski were considered as revealing. In 2008, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the pontificate of John Paul II, he presented in Vienna and Rome a musical-literary program of his own concept, in which the poems of Karol Wojtyła were recited. However, let's go back to the poems of the violinist-pooette in the volume, and it includes works created on emigration.
The Black Cross
I want I was a black box.
I would have survived the assassination.
I'd know everything
I'd be in captivity.
But my memory
It would have worked a long time.
Until the day
In which my heart would be opened
And individual worthy
He'd take it out.
The Seed of Truth
This shocking poem does not require comments, it is the lyrical cry of the soul wounded by the Tupola massacre, which pseudo-investigation tries to represent as an "accident". This is developed by another poem by Joanna Mądroszkiewicz devoted to the memory of the victims trapped in sealed coffins.
TRUTH
I cry over you
who
in unexplained
mysterious
unknown
hidden
silenced
lied
unknown
circumstances
Martyrly Death
Tears
Burnt
To pieces
possibly they were shot.
(are we certain we don't?)
You remainder in sealed coffins
Or possibly somewhere else.
(do we truly know where?)
I cry over you
And your families.
who don't know
They feel
It's not like that.
and pain grows
proportional
to increasing lies
Just the truth
It would take the weight off.
she discovered with muddy knotted
Remains
Smolensk truth
not very painful
Just this one.
Clean as a whistle
This teardrop in her poems floats over Poland, loved to pain by a poet, which illustrates the cycle of poems “mazurka”. And, as he writes, the mazurka illustration draws the work of the Polish heart. The key to her poesy is “the word of longing/word of love / Poland” (p.53). And in the title poem “Green Island” is the imagination of Poland in a state far from our promised happiness during the memorable elections in 2007. Her condition slow reaches the emptiness of cold fields, and in human hearts crosses (in the poem “There was specified a country...”, p.50). another nuances of this misery are discovered in the poems “The Time of Barbarians” and “Krakowskie Przedmieście” (p.48/49). This summary is most likely not an accident, but it draws a image of modern barbarians, undercovers who ambushed people defending the Cross in Krakowskie Przedmieście:
in shoes cleaned for flash/
Smolenian mud splashes them.
They – our traitor brothers
In the heart of the capital, in front of the lonely Cross, they proclaim cynically: “Poland is ours/drink gentlemen!” Next to these poems – as if "citizens" – are, of course, very individual lyrics, born from the burning sparks of the soul. It is simply a collection of authentic poetry, in which the heart is simply a filter and an arbitrator, rejecting the aggression of evil. It remains in an intimate relation with the Creator: “I remember God/ before/ erstwhile he created structures” (p.28). The richness of appeals will be discovered by the reader himself, let's just say that Joanna's poems are like surviving flowers that pulsate a wide scope of feelings for the Homeland/Mother or explain the decision to leave the earth where they “kiss all tree encountered” (p.56):
I left the storm
Halfway home
I couldn't kneel anymore.
All fingers
He ripped my wind
The violins went back into the woods by themselves.
Somewhere quiet they fail... ( p.33)
In this awesome allies of music with poetry, the word does not give way to finesse with a string, and as hope and consolation, the poet offers us a “outbreak that no tears will quench” (p.24). We wear them--hot or extinguished--under the heart, and it—like Phoenix—is the origin of all renewal and rebirth of man, as well as of nations.
A year after this debut tomik, the second collection of Joanna Mądroszkiewicz – “Polish roads” – was published in the same Krakow office. Of course, it would be hard for a reader who does not know the Green Island to discover this continuum, especially seen in poems dealing with themes or images of his homeland, but in both volumes there are besides separate currents. Here is simply a crucial cycle of love poems in “Polish roads” but not only “worldly” poems, for we will besides find poems filled with love for the Lord of Creation and at the same time the 1 who opens up “the eternal gate” (p.72).
In the descriptions of Polish landscapes, not only the eye is simply a guide to us, due to the fact that the poet- violinist is in control of absolute hearing, as illustrated by e.g. these verses:
Silent stream
The Sixteenth Everlasting Truth
Falling leaves...( p. 10)
In fact, fact is 1 of the key words of this poetry, and the value and price of fact are best spoken by the following verses:
I like an honest fistful of ash
Than diamond
False fact ( p.36)
Another crucial word is love, it appears in many contexts and penetrates the title of 1 of the series of poems of this book: “The braids of love”:
I'm mating and spreading
The growlings of Love ( p.66)
Love is omnipresent and as if beyond the dimension of time ( “without beginning/ without end—p.78), omnipotent (p.79), but it is besides unfulfilled (p.87). and sometimes reaches a catastrophic dimension: the Apocalypse of Love...( p.111).
And the extraordinary and beautiful definition of poesy is found in these words:
poesy is the wind in crazy dreams
It's a frost shining in the leaf-scattering
And the flower, and the hand, and the braids (p.34)
The definition is subtle and spacious, goes further than Grochowiak's mediocre proposal: "The breath of poesy is snow or soot". And it so happens that the wind and dream penetrate the “Wedding” of Wyspiański, another work that is overflowing with Polishness. And these 3 lines of Joanna Mądroszkiewicz talk more about the essence of poesy than Valéry and many others. It happens to poets to penetrate the mysteries of poetic creation, to mention Lechonia’s poem “Poetry”, worth discussing.
In Joanna's second volume, the song “Polska Litania” (p.14/15), which is simply a lyrical condensation of Polishness, seen from the position of martyrdom, is worth peculiar attention, to give this passage:
We are descendants of Volyn
Singers and Katynia/Smolensk...
Children of Siberia
And Kazakhstan...
And pogroms from 4 sides of the world...
We live everywhere and nowhere
From End to End
Inhuman lands...
In this poetic litany the tragic destiny of our hearts, annihilated and tormented on the paths of History, vibrates. In this litany there is simply a dramatic message from the poet to us, bearers of Polish history, tradition and national memory. In this respect, Joanna's book deserves an IPN award if it existed. After all, we will not escape the memory of the common fate, unless individual from Polish and fragile birch values more "smolensk mud". As we look deeper into Joanna's poems, we can agree with Miłosz, who thought that "the actual field of poesy is contemplation...and its object is the full human reality subject to the unchanging necessity of love and death..." ( vide "The Office of Poets", 1967, No.4). But at Joanna Mądroszkiewicz, not only is reality the subject of contemplation, due to the fact that it includes past (there was a country in dreams/in blood...), time (it’s just a clock in my heart/ and it’s time again...) or Creator (I remember God/ before/ erstwhile he created structures...). The poet besides confesses that he will not escape from the Lord, who "represses her daily/new/with the grace of suffering" (p.106). And we thank the Lord for giving us specified a violin artist and words. Joanna left us on 4 June 2014 in Vienna, published poems in Kraków, and rested in her family's tomb in Gdynia.And until the end she branded Polish Octopus – as she called the Civic Platform – which entangled citizens and her beloved Poland with sneaky tentacles and dragged her down.
Marek Baterovich
