In Harmony with Delight - Justyna Tomska talks to Ewa Sonnenberg

Your last but one volume of poetry, The Burning Tram, came out in 2001. It seems there have been four years of publishing drought; you said once that you write during breakfast, dinner, fear, flue, at the dentist’s. Now you hand over 28 poems. How can you excuse yourself?

Not only the writer works for herself, the whole environment works for her. Time, space, situations, events, relations, meetings with people. This is what shapes the writer. There were indeed such periods in my life when I did not part with a piece of paper and something to write. Then I filled in an enormous number of notebooks, it was almost like an obsession. I wrote all the time no matter where I was; in a restaurant, in a café, in a taxi, on the tram, on the train. I kept making notes. Obviously notes are not poems, you work on poems and notes are just sketches.

The history of my poetry volumes is quite complicated. The Burning Tram was published in summer 2001, and A Lesson of Delight in summer 2005, even though the Lesson poems are older than the Tram ones. Obviously all this time I kept working on the Lesson poems, I kept polishing them. This collection is different from the previous ones, somehow more delicate and lyrical. I decided not to use contemporary words, or colloquialisms. I would say that this book is a little bit old-fashioned, but I wanted it to be this way. First, I wanted to breathe a new poetics; secondly, I wanted to rebel against the current fashions; thirdly, it is my private spiritual creed. After all, this form suits best what I write about there. It is a book of a man who starts everything from the beginning, like a child, learns to perceive the world, like a child, is surprised by this world. This is how I felt then. I wanted to learn anew to understand the world. I think that this book teaches how to look. This is kind of a comeback to childhood. This is also a never-ending conversation between a surprised student and the master.

So I’ve ruined my conception because I wanted to ask you whether the present Ewa rebels less than the old Ewa, and she wonders more instead. And you are saying that the present Ewa is older than the one from the previous book. Does it mean that we can overtake ourselves?

We can overtake not only ourselves but also our fate [smile]. A Lesson of Delight, despite the fact that it was written before The Burning Tram, is very close to me, I am in harmony with this book. These poems are still in me, deeply rooted. They agree with my present state of spirit. There is no argument between us. The book was written very spontaneously and it is based on the concept. In a similar way The Planet and The Land of Thousand Notebooks were written. But this is not the only way in which books of poetry are written. Sometimes I gather poems over the years and then arrange them into a whole, like in Hazard or The Leash, which weren’t written spontaneously. Every collection of poetry should be a whole, after all it is a book just as any other book. It has action, narration, turning points, climax, diminuendo, protagonists to whom everything might happen.

Who gave Ewa Sonnenberg lessons of delight?

Delight you have to find in yourself. In the motto to the book, I wrote:

wonder that there is something like wonder
and this is the first wonder

wonder that somebody has told you about it
and this is the second wonder

wonder that now also you can
and this is the third wonder

So there is wonder in ourselves, but there is also wonder that we take from other people. Part of the answer to your question is the dedication. The book is dedicated to my parents and to Joanna Krasińska-Glazewska. My parents were the first to teach me how to look at the world, which is natural. My mother was a very sensitive and extraordinary person. I met Joanna in Paris, where I was on the stipend of Independent Culture. I lived in Saint Casimir’s House, which is led by the Sisters of Charity. I lived seven rooms away from Norwid’s room! It was a great experience for me. There I met Joanna, a descendent of Zygmunt Krasiński, with whom I made friends. And again it was something wonderful because I’ve always loved romantic literature. When I was a child my mother used to read to me Mickiewicz’s Ballads and Romances, which I already knew by heart, and then there was Słowacki, Norwid, Krasiński. When I was reciting my poems to Joanna I felt as if I had been reciting them to Krasiński himself. The friendship with Joanna was an extraordinary and unique experience. This woman was exceptional. She was a person of great culture, she had the qualities that are very rare in the modern turbulent world. We used to read Krasiński together and listen to music. I owe this friendship a lot, at the beginning of my stay in Paris I was going through a serious crisis. This friendship made me anew and it opened my eyes to a new kind of sensibility.

And you felt that you needed to give this lesson to other? What kind of lesson of delight you would like to give to your readers?

I would like to teach them to see important things in unimportant things. To see in things most down-to-earth things most extraordinary. We must remember that apart from our reality, there is a different one, extralinguistic, which strives to become articulated via poetry and art. We are touched by the Absolute and we need to realize that.

In the poem “Afterword” you say that this book has been written by the reader, “in waiting for the big things recognizing the power of the things that are small,” that your poetry “can neither lie nor tell the truth,” that it is “beyond what is obvious or necessary,” and that it is “a gift of an unexpected meeting.” It is almost like a small interpretation of what is poetry. Let us talk about this poem.

It is hard for me because this poem is still deep inside me. I do remember very well the moment when it was being created. I wrote it seized by inspiration. It was a wonderful feeling. I was very happy. It is a strong feeling, when the poem is somewhere deep inside us, and later we see it on a piece of paper. We feel then an enormous fulfillment. In this poem, I’m coming out to meet the reader. It could be a kind of homage paid to the ones who have taught me delight, the ability to see beauty, the awareness that every moment is important, who have helped me to regain the faith in people, who have proved that sensibility and delicacy are ones of the most important human features. That is why delight is not exaltation.

In „A Lyrical Guide to Europe” you wrote that writing is a kind of sacrilege of oneself and that the pen should be held in a dirty hand, but in the poem „The Birthday Gift” from the new book you write that it is each man’s duty to call beautiful what is not beautiful. Can the dirty hand call beautiful what is not beautiful?

You relate my various extremes. My life is a streak of many extremes. My impression is that the world that is built on extremes is much richer. This continual struggle between extremes releases some force. In one of my poems I quote Celan, who writes that only the pure hands write the true poems. The dirty hand is a metaphor of the full and deep contact with reality. Without any discounts, handicaps, or shortcuts. Living life to the full – reaching the spiritual heights but also the very bottom. If we just walk safely the middle road half steam, our life will be bleak and dull. Michelangelo said that nobody reaches the mastery in art, if first he does not reach the limits of life.

Does the poet have a mission?

Every great poet has a mission, the mission to serve the truth and only the truth. I would like to show the things that an average reader does not see.

It reminds me of Barańczak, who said that writing poems he is fighting against Nothingness. What is Ewa Sonnenberg fighting against?

I am fighting against falseness and hypocrisy, which distort reality. I fight against evil, which leads the intellect and spirit astray.

In your poems you often confuse your readers, you interpret certain things contrary to the way they are customarily interpreted. In the poem “Faith” you write, “let error be repeated after error, so that what is certain would not tempt,” or in the poem “Hope,” “that never on time never now/ that directions will be incorrect.” But faith is the belief that there will be no error and hope is the hope that we will take the right direction.

Yes, I want to make people aware of certain stereotypes. But in the poem “error” means humility. Not always what we consider right is right. There is a danger of responding to reality in a mechanical way. My poems are meant to tease and to awaken some kind of intellectual and spiritual vigil. To warn against schematic thinking, which is lethal to imagination and spiritual freedom. Maybe we need to look anew for love, hope, faith, to discover anew what they mean. They should not be treated as clichés, some sort of habits. We need to rediscover them, their greatness, their place in the world and our lives. To tell the truth, this lesson (not only of delight) has been prolonged. Recently, I’ve been working on the sequence of poems: how to read, how to speak, how to look. Maybe I’m looking for the master? But not in the common understanding of the word. Not only somebody physically sitting in front of us can be a master, it could be an experience, a moment, a person from the past.

We should mention your extremely rich biography, the Musical Academy in Wrocław [Breslau], philosophy, dance, diving course and turning a blind eye course.

Part of it is a joke. I have indeed finished a diving course, but in the ocean of everyday life. It is true that I have been doing lots of things. I have traveled a lot. My biography would have filled many thick volumes! The Musical Academy, Literary and Artistic Studies [creative writing postgraduate program in Kraków] and now I’m finishing philosophy on the Jagiellonian University. Which means that all the time I’m looking for something. I’ve always been a restless spirit. I’ve always had many interests: astronomy, biology, architecture, painting, art in general. I started writing as a child. Writing was my hobby when suddenly it changed into something more serious. It was after my accident in 1990, I was run over by a car. A little bit like with Conrad. He started to write after some ship accident. So I started to write consciously, that is, not to pigeonhole my writing. And this is the way it is now.

translated by Katarzyna Jakubiak