This first edition of the collected critical prose of Anna Frajlich, scholar of Polish literature and culture and award-winning Polish poet, presents comparative studies of major modern Polish writers, including Choromäski, Grynberg, Herbert, Milosz, Schulz, Szymborska, and Wittlin.

Table of Contents

Author¿s Preface

Part One: On Poetry

1. Czes¿aw Mi¿osz: The Ambivalent Landscape of Return
2. He Also Knew How to Be Gracious (Czes¿aw Mi¿osz)
3. From Common Servant to Lot¿s Wife (Wis¿awa Szymborska)
4. Intellect Imbued with Clarity, Grace, and Humor: Notes on Wis¿awa Szymborska
5. The Ghost of Shakespeare in the Poetry of Wis¿awa Szymborska
6. The Last Time We Saw Her . . . (Wis¿awa Szymborska)
7. Apollo and Marsyas: A Tribute to Zbigniew Herbert
8. Poet of the Seventh Climate: Recurrent Images in the Poetry of Bronis¿aw Przy¿uski
9. A Canon of His Own (Vasyl Makhno)
10. Must Poetry Be Absolutely Modern?

Part Two: On Polish Prose

11. Two Unknown Soldiers (Józef Wittlin)
12. Bruno Schulz: Mythmaker and Legend
13. The Lifelong Passion of Jerzy Ficowski
14. Jealousy, Sex, and Character: Michä Choromäski and Otto Weininger
15. Narrative Strategies: The Case of Andrzej Bobkowski      
16. Henryk Grynberg: His Quest for Artistic and Non-Artistic Truth
17. Finding the Way between Globalization and Decentralization: Polish Literature after 1989

Part Three: On Russian Symbolist Poetry

18. Three Great Romans in Valery Bryusov¿s Poetry
19. The Contradictions of the Northern Pilgrim: Dmitry Merezhkovsky
20. The Quest for Pax Romana as a Quest for Peace of Mind. Vasily Komarovsky
21. The Scepter of the Far East and the Crown of the Third Rome: The Russo-Japanese War in the Mirror of Russian Poetry

Part Four: Autobiography

22. My Native Realm
23. My ¿Unprocessed¿ Holocaust
24. March Began in June: My ¿Processed¿ Trauma
25. The Price of Integrity
26. Cultural Diversity in the Workplace
27. Writing Polish in America
28. Identity and Difference: The Power of Language

Afterword
Departures, Returns, Memory: The Collected Essays of Anna Frajlich

Bibliography
Selected Honors and Publications

Anna Frajlich (Senior Lecturer Emerita) taught Polish language and literature at Columbia University for over three decades. She is author of ten books of poetry and three bilingual editions (English, French, Italian). In 2002 she received The Knight¿s Cross of the Order of Merit, awarded by the President of the Polish Republic. Frajlich is also the recipient of literary awards from Ko¿cielski Foundation, Turzäski Foundation, and the Union of Polish Writers in Exile. 

Ronald Meyer is Publications Editor at the Harriman Institute. He teaches the seminar in Russian literary translation at Columbia University.