Critical Essay | Critical Review by Edward Możejko

Critical Review by Edward Możejko

SOURCE: A review of Überblendungen, in World Literature Today, Vol. 63, No. 4, Autumn, 1988, pp. 688–89.

In the following excerpt, Możejko praises Różewicz's style in Überblendungen.

Überblendungen (Penetrations) is an attempt to give a cross section of Tadeusz Różewicz's poetry in German. Whether the attempt is successful is another matter. Różewicz has attained a position alongside Miłosz and Herbert as one of the most prominent Polish poets of the postwar era. He was awarded the State Prize for Literature in 1966 and five years later was recognized by a vote of younger Polish poets as the most distinguished living poet in Poland. His debut volume, Niepokój (Anxiety; 1947), opened a new vein in Polish poetry in that it established a terse, objective, almost factual style which spoke directly about the horrors of war and hitherto unknown humiliation of human dignity. In subsequent collections Różewicz pursued this tone of moral...
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