Poland

Halina Poswiatowska

translation by Marek Lugowski, marek@enteract.com
http://www.enteract.com/~marek/HalinaFAQ

Halina Poswiatowska (1935 - 1967) was a cosmopolitan Polish poet who died young of complications after her 2nd heart surgery. In 1958 she traveled to Philadelphia, USA, for her first heart operation which was successful and gave her several more years. She chose to enter Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, graduating in 3 years, even though she had to learn English along the way. Rather then continue her philosophy studies under a graduate fellowship at Stanford University, she returned to Poland where she completed a Masters in analytical philosophy at Jagielonian University in Krakow.

While her poetry was and remains immensely popular with Polish readers, it is only now beginning to command the due respect of Polish scholars, who heretofore have classified her as a writer of feminine erotics. This new reassessment is evidenced by a careful 2001 book on her subject, "Nierozwazna i nieromantyczna: o Halinie Poswiatowskiej" ("Hotheaded and unromantic: about Halina Poswiatowska), authored by Grazyna Borkowska, a historian of literature, who places Poswiatowska within the matrix of learned world poets, assiduously precise and art-aware in her choice of subjects and language constructs.

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