The Selected Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert. by Ewald Osers; George GibianReview by: Zdenek SalzmannSlavic Review, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 370-371Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2498980 .

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370 Slavic Review

more trenchant, coming as it did from prison where these authorities had incarcerated him for his political activity.

Michnik's answer to Jaruzelski is grounded in his experience in, and understanding of, the Solidarity interlude. For a period of sixteen months Poles had ceased being the passive objects of an unpopular, alien system and had begun to act like subjects fully capable of having some say in their political, social, and cultural identity. To Michnik the only genuine dialogue between the regime and the people can be one that is not dictated by the Communists on their own terms. In other words, it should be based on the recogni- tion not of the leading role of the Communist party, but of the rights of society. These rights, as Michnik sees them, do not envision Poland's secession from the Soviet bloc or the immediate introduction of parliamentary democracy. They do preserve, in the main, the practices and the core of what had been won during the Solidarity days-society's autonomy and the right of individual Poles to act as political subjects.

Unlike the neorealists in present-day Poland who have responded to the regime's campaign for national reconciliation and joined the new front organizations in hopes of improving the situation from within the system, Michnik urges noncooperation so long as all agreements are concluded on the Communists' terms. Through pressure and resistance, he believes, society can gradually win for itself small areas of true autonomy, which even- tually will add up to more substantial gains and deeper changes.

The greatest interest of these essays for an American reader is the author's arguments that articulate the meaning of the Solidarity period for Polish political life. Michnik is not too concerned with establishing what led to the military coup on 13 December 1981- whether it was the perfidy of the Communists who never intended to observe the Gdansk Agreements or the growing radicalism in the trade union movement. The existential fact is that Polish society was able to force a compromise on the regime and hence, having once tasted freedom, must continue to plan and work for regaining that right. This unshaken belief in the spiritual legacy of Solidarity leads Michnik to argue that it should not be Jaruzelski urging the nation to make concessions or compromises, but the other way around. The nation should act and force the regime to make concessions to the over- whelming majority.

Michnik's prescription is a far cry from the Polish insurrectionary tradition. He is an advocate of the long and patient evolutionary strategy of unceasing struggle for the expansion of civil liberties and human rights. It is the tactic of self-limiting revolution that builds on and expands human possibilities-one that Jonathan Schell (in his introduction to the English translation of Michnik's essays) has aptly called an original Polish contri- bution to political action.

ELIZABETH KRIDL VALKENIER

Harriman Institute, Columbia University

THE SELECTED POETRY OF JAROSLAV SEIFERT. Translated by Ewald Osers. Edited, with additional translations, by George Gibian. New York: Macmillan, 1986. vii, 194 pp. Cloth.

Jaroslav Seifert, the much-beloved poet of his native Czechoslovakia, was scarcely known in the English-speaking countries until he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1984, a little more than a year before his death in January 1986 at the age of 84. Although English translations of some of the numerous poems published during Seifert's lifetime have begun appearing with increasing frequency since the late 1970s, a thoughtful selection from his work was not among them. This glaring omission has now been corrected to a great extent by the appearance of The Selected Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert.

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Reviews 371

The book consists of several parts: an introductory essay by the editor; a selection of Seifert's poems in the translation of Ewald Osers; a selection from Seifert's prose reminis- cences, translated by Gibian; and a glossary of names and places, followed by notes.

In the introduction, subtitled "The Lyrical Voice of Czechoslovakia," Gibian sketches the development of Seifert from the first volume of poetry published in 1921 through his poetry of the postwar years, when he came to be a symbol of courage and political incor- ruptibility. The introductory essay continues with a brief characterization of Seifert's poet- ry and concludes with Gibian's remembrance of his visit with the poet in Prague in Feb- ruary 1985.

The core of the book, the anthology of Seifert's poetry, contains ninety-two poems selected from seventeen collections published between 1921 and 1983. The selection emphasizes the poet's later work; about a fourth of the pieces come from the interwar period while a full third were written after 1978. The bulk of the translations in this volume appear here for the first time. Ewald Osers, a well-known translator with many prizes to his credit, is one among about a half-dozen individuals who have rendered Seifert's poetry into English. In the opinion of this reviewer, he has accomplished the difficult task with both sensitivity and accuracy. Osers's skill is particularly evident in the case of Seifert's earlier rhymed poems that possess the simplicity of a folk song (e.g., "Song" and "Song of the Native Land").

Gibian's sampling of the poet's extensive and delightful reminiscences, VHecky krasy svevta (1981), is judicious and expertly rendered into English. The glossary and notes at the end of the book should be helpful to readers who may otherwise be puzzled by the not- infrequent mentions of personalities of Czech cultural life or avant-garde writers who influenced the Czech literary scene of interwar Czechoslovakia, as well as by references to places or historical events pertaining to the poet's native city (Prague) and country. There are some misprints and missing diacritics in the Czech names, but they are not serious or frequent enough to distract the reader with a knowledge of Czech.

Among the several English-language renditions of Seifert, this one is by far the most useful and representative introduction to the poet's work. Both the editor and the transla- tor must be complimented for giving the English-speaking public the opportunity to read this outstanding modern Czech poet in a crisp, reliable, and sensitive translation.

ZDENEK SALZMANN

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

LITERATURA POLSKA W PERSPEKTYWIE EUROPEJSKIEJ. By Jerzy Pietrkiewicz. Translated by Anna Olszewska-Marcinkiewicz and Ignacy Sieradzki. Edited with an introductory essay by Jerzy Starnawski. Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1986. 363 pp. 500 zl., paper.

Jerzy Pietrkiewicz holds a unique place among Polish emigre writers. Although only twenty-three years old when World War II broke out, he was already an established publicist in Poland and the author of three volumes of poetry. After the war, as an emigre living in England, he wrote primarily in English and published eight novels in that lan- guage. He continued to write poetry in Polish and also translated English poetry into Polish and vice versa. In 1947 he began to teach Polish literature at the London School of Slavonic and East European Languages, a post he retained until his early retirement in 1979.

The volume under review comprises twenty essays by Pietrkiewicz on Polish literature; it thus occupies only a marginal position in the copious bilingual production of this poet, novelist, and essayist. All but three of the essays were originally written in English, and

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