Überblendungen
[In the following excerpt, Możejko praises Różewicz's style in Überblendungen.]
Różewicz's poetry is characterized by two major formal traits: a narrative structure which reminds the reader of prose, and concreteness of description, as in “Pigtail”: “When all the women in the transport / had their heads shaved / four workmen with brooms made of birch twigs / swept up / and gathered up the hair.” His poetry therefore poses no particular difficulty to translators, in either German or English. Moreover, he entirely abandons traditional stanzas and meter; what really counts is semantic cadence and intonation. By and large, Peter Lachmann, a minor poet himself, has coped well in rendering the Polish originals into German, although his tendency to abridge texts occasionally goes too far, as when he eliminates an entire stanza from “Cud dnia powszedniego,” clearly diminishing its ironic flavor.
My major reservation, however, is in Lachmann's selection of poems. A number of important, almost programmatic pieces are missing. Perhaps they exist in earlier translations of Różewicz's verse into German, but if so, this should have been indicated in a short introductory note. Despite this shortcoming, Überblendungen will doubtless solidify Różewicz's position as a poet of international significance.
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