samedi 23 mai 2009

Voyage à Cracovie (XIII) :

mardi 21 avril 2009 : la neuvième et la dernière journée






Jacek Malczewski
(ses oeuvres)
(15 July 1854 – 8 October 1929 in Kraków)





"Childred of our age"


Wisława Szymborska


We are children of our age,
it's a political age.

All day long, all through the night,
all affairs --- your, ours, theirs ---
are political affairs.

Whether you like it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin, a political cast,
your eyes, a political slant.

Whatever you say reverberates,
whatever you don't say speaks for itself.
So either way you're talking politics.

Even when you take to the woods,
you're taking political steps
on political grounds.

Apolitical poems are also political,
and above us shines a moon
no longer purely lunar.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
And though it troubles the digestion
it's a question, as always, of politics.

To acquire a political meaning
you don't even have to be human.
Raw material will do,
or protein feed, or crude oil,

or a conference table whose shape
was quarrelled over for months:
Should we arbitrate life and death
at a round table or a square one.

Meanwhile, people perished,
animals died,
houses burned,
and the fields ran wild
just as in times immemorial
and less political.




Nicolaus Copernicus

(February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543)










MUZEUM NARODOWE W KRAKOWIE
(NATIONAL MUSEUM IN KRAKOW)










Place du marché



jeudi 21 mai 2009

mardi 19 mai 2009

Voyage à Cracovie (XI) : Wisława Szymborska, poétesse polonaise

dimanche 19 avril 2009 : la septième journée

Il y a quelques jours, j'ai acheté le livre "Nothing twice: collected poems" de Wisława Szymborska (née le 2 juillet 1923, prix Nobel de littérature en 1996), qui habite encore à Cracovie. Je l'ai lu dans un café cet après-midi.


from "Nothing twice"

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

...

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with exactly the same kisses.

...

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.



"Innocence"

Conceived on a mattress made of human hair.
Gerda. Erika. Maybe Margarete.
She doesn't know, no, not a thing about it.
This kind of knowledge isn't suited
to being passed on or absorbed.
The Greek Furies were too righteous.
Their birdy excess would rub us the wrong way.

Irma. Brigitte. Maybe Frederika.
She's twenty-two, perhaps a little older.
She knows the three languages that all travellers need.
The company she works for plans to export
the finest mattresses, synthetic fiber only.
Trade brings nations closer.

Berta. Ulrike. Maybe Hildegard.
Not beautiful perhaps, but tall and slim.
Cheeks, neck, breast, thighs, belly
in full bloom now, shiny and new.
Blissfully barefoot on Europe's beaches,
she unbraids her bright hair, right down to her knees.

My advice: don't cut it (her hairdresser says)
once you have, it'll never grow back so thick.
Trust me.
It's been proved
tausend- und tausendmal.


dimanche 17 mai 2009

Voyage à Cracovie (X) : Stanisław Wyspiański, artiste polonais

samedi 18 avril 2009 : la sixième journée



Stanisław Wyspiański

(15 janvier 1869, Kraków - 28 novembre 1907, Kraków)
































dimanche 10 mai 2009

Voyage à Cracovie (IX) : Visiter Oświęcim

vendredi 17 avril 2009 : la cinqième journée










Auschwitz I




























Auschwitz II (Birkenau)