Adam Zagajewski


Adam Zagajewski is a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist. He was awarded the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award and the 2017 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature. He is considered as one of the leading poets of the Generation of '68' or the Polish New Wave and is one of Poland's most prominent contemporary poets.

Biography

Adam Zagajewski was born in 1945 in Lwów. His father was Tadeusz Zagajewski and his mother was Ludwika Zagajewska, née Turska. The Zagajewski family was expelled from Lwów by the Ukrainians to central Poland the same year. They moved to the city of Gliwice where he graduated from Andrzej Strug V High School. Subsequently, he studied psychology and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He later taught philosophy at the AGH University of Science and Technology. In 1967, he made his poetic debut with Music, a poem published in Życie Literackie magazine. He published his works as well as reviews in such magazines as Odra and Twórczość. During this time, he became involved in the New Wave literary movement also known as the Generation of '68'. The aim of the group was "standing up against the falsifications of reality and the appropriation of language by communist ideology and propaganda". After signing the Letter of 59 his works were banned by communist authorities in Poland. In 1978, he was one of the founders and first lecturers of the Scientific Training Association. In 1982, he emigrated to Paris, but in 2002 he returned to Poland together with his wife Maja Wodecka, and resides in Kraków. He is a member of the Polish Writers' Association.
His literary works have received international recognition and have been translated into many languages. Joachim T. Baer, a reviewer from World Literature Today pointed out that the recurring themes in Zagajewski's poetry include "the night, dreams, history and time, infinity and eternity, silence and death." Colm Tóibín notes that in his best poems "he has succeeded in making the space of the imagination connect with experience; things seen and heard and remembered in all their limits and sorrow and relished joy have the same power for him as things conjured." American poet Robert Pinsky observes that Zagajewski's poems are "about the presence of the past in ordinary life: history not as a chronicle of the dead … but as an immense, sometimes subtle force inhering in what people see and feel every day – and in the ways we see and feel". His poem "Try To Praise The Mutilated World", printed in The New Yorker, became famous after the 11 September attacks.
Zagajewski used to teach poetry workshops as a visiting lecturer at the School of Literature and Arts at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków as well as a creative writing course at the University of Houston in the United States. He is currently a faculty member at the University of Chicago and a member of its Committee on Social Thought. He teaches two classes, one of which is on fellow Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz.

Awards

He was awarded the Bronze Cross of Merit, and twice received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. In 1992, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He won the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, considered a forerunner to the Nobel Prize in Literature, and is the second Polish writer to be awarded, after Czeslaw Milosz.
In 2015 he received the Heinrich Mann Prize. In May 2016 he was awarded the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize of the University of Tübingen. In the same year he received the Order of Legion d'Honneur and the :hu:Janus Pannonius Költészeti Nagydíj|Janus Pannnius Grand Prize for Poetry as well. In 2017 he was awarded The Princess of Asturias Award, "one of the most important awards in the Spanish-speaking world." In 2018 his collection of essays, Poezja dla początkujących, was nominated for the Nike Award, Poland's top literary honor. Since 2019, Zagajewski has been member of the order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts.

Collections

;Poetry
;Prose
;Essays
;Poetry
;Essays
;Edited

Critical studies and reviews