From Olsztyn Chronicle (Sections I-VII) by Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński

Translated from the Polish by Joanna Kurowska

Olsztyn Chronicle

I

The reeds are starting to yellow,
the acorns are swelling on trees
—signaling summer’s golden feet
are getting ready to retreat.

Summer, what plea would make you stay?
What kind of sobbing or request?
Are you eager to take away,
in your bag, the greenery and birds?

Birds so thick, the greenery lush.
Summer, why the rush?

II

Good to be at the lake
even on a rainy day.
In the evening, the ranger
lights the kerosene lamp.
After a while in all rooms
the kerosene lamps burn;
the shadows of deer horns
expand into infinity.

Dogs are barking.
Midnight trumpets approach.
Clouds race across the sky
like great hunting dogs.

Huddled together like kids
we fall asleep.
The moon purrs and shines.
The night has cleared.

The bees slumber.
Only water splashes nonstop at the shore.
We dream of hunting,
ferns, deer, and rifles.

III

The morning weather, the morning sun.
We are going to the bath.
Pure beauty!  Pure fun!
How not to be glad?

The woodpecker knocks at a tree.
Fish splash from under our feet.

Brothers, jump in! And swim, swim
to the other side, where the gale
—the laughing wind—plays its song
on the strings of reeds and cattails.

IV

And those Olsztyn forests
are good for hiking with dogs.
And those Olsztyn ravines
are full of pine and oaks.

A rainbow sets up bridges.
Sage wafts its Venus scent.
A bird sits on the shoulder.
A mosquito sobs in a sunbeam.

During the day, the sky laughs,
at night, it lights up with stars;
the stars fall into birds’ nests.
It will be sad to leave this place.

V

All the murmurs,
all the swaying of grass,
all the gliding
of birds and bird-shadows

all the chatter
of rushes and reeds,
all the tremors
of poplar leaves,

all the shimmers
in water and clouds,
all the flowers,
all the road-dust,

all the dew drops,
and all the bees—
friend, this is still
not enough for me.

I crave for more birds
and bird-packed shrubs,
more lights, stars, and clouds,
more reeds and water ducks,

to grasp it all with my hands,
to kiss it all with my mouth,
and set as the sun sets.

VI

You are my lake,
I am your sun,
I dress you with lights,
my rustling delight.
I gild your reeds.
I depart and come back.

My curls rest cozily
on your green bulrush.
O lake, beautiful lake,
lovelier than a guitar!

Then, through the night sky,
the stars, in a string, descend
like a flock of parrots
to rest upon your hair.

VII

Dust over the meadow swirls,
the moon has raised his candlestick.
Do you see?
It is the night, rolling like a cart
With country musicians.

Owls rest on the horses’ heads.
Colorful ribbons. The whip shakes.
The harness sends a peel of bells.

Hey, the fiery fiddles will strike!
the wild boars and deer will dance
in the forest halls until dawn.

Kronika Olsztyńska

I

Gdy trzcina zaczyna płowieć, 
a żołądź większy w dąbrowie, 
znak, że lata złote nogi
już się szykują do drogi.

Lato, jakże cię ubłagać?
prośbą jaką, łkaniem jakim? 
Tak ci pilno pójść i zabrać 
w walizce zieleń i ptaki?

Ptaków tyle. Zieleni tyle. 
Lato, zaczekaj chwilę.

II

Dobrze jest nad jeziorem
nawet porą deszczową.
Leśniczy wieczorem
lampę zapala naftową,
po chwili we wszystkich pokojach 
naftowe lampy płoną,
a cienie od rogów jelenich 
rozrastają się w nieskończoność.

Psy szczekają.
Trąbki północy bliskie.
A chmury pędzą po niebie
 jak wielkie psy myśliwskie.

Zasypiamy
przytuleni do siebie jak dzieci. 
Noc się wypogodziła.
Księżyc mruczy i świeci.

Pszczoły śpią.
Tylko woda chlupie o brzeg bez przerwy. 
A nam się śnią polowania,
paprocie, jelenie i strzelby.

III

Rano słońce, rano pogoda, 
idziemy do kąpieli.
Sama radość! Sama uroda! 
Jak tu się nie weselić?

Z sosny słychać dzięcioła stuk. 
A tutaj ryby bryzg! spod nóg.

Ech, bracia, wpław! I płynąć, pływać, 
aż tam, gdzie z drugiej strony
wiatr, roześmiany wiatr przygrywa 
na sitowia strunach zielonych.

IV

A w tych borach olsztyńskich 
dobrze z psami wędrować.
A w tych jarach olsztyńskich
sośnina i dąbrowa.

Tęcza mosty rozstawia.
Jak Wenus pachnie szałwia. 
Ptak siada na ramieniu. 
Komar płacze w promieniu.

W dzień niebo się zaśmiewa, 
a nocą się zagwieżdża, 
gwiazdy w gniazda spadają. 
Żal będzie stąd odjeżdżać.

V

Wszystkie szmery,
wszystkie traw kołysania, 
wszystkie ptaków
i cieniów ptasich przelatywania,

wszystkie trzcin,
wszystkie sitowia rozmowy, 
wszystkie drżenia
liści topolowych,

wszystkie blaski
na wodzie i obłokach,
wszystkie kwiaty, 
wszystek pył na drogach,

wszystkie pszczoły, 
wszystkie krople rosy 
to mi jeszcze, przyjacielu, 
nie dosyć—

chciałbym więcej ptaków,
drzew z ptakami,
więcej blasków, gwiazd, obłoków,
trzcin, kaczek na wodzie,

i uchwycić to wszystko rękami, 
ucałować to wszystko ustami
i tak zajść, jak słońce zachodzi.

VI

Tyś jest jezioro moje,
ja jestem twoje słońce, 
światłami ciebie stroję, 
szczęście moje szumiące. 
Trzciny twoje pozłacam. 
Odchodzę, i znów wracam.

Miękko moim kędziorom
w twych zielonych szuwarach. 
O, jezioro, jezioro
piękniejsze niż gitara!

A nocą przez niebiosa 
zlatują sznurem długim 
gwiazdy i na twych włosach 
siadają jak papugi.

VII

Tuman nad łąką dymi, 
księżyc swój lichtarz wzniósł.
Widzisz?  
To noc się toczy jak wóz
Z muzykantami wiejskimi.

Na łbach końskich przysiadły sowy. 
Bicz się chwieje. Wstążki kolorowe. 
Uprząż kurant wydzwania.

Ech, uderzą siarczyste smyki!
będą tańczyć jelenie i dziki
w leśnych salach do samego świtania.

Translator’s Note on the Poet and Kronika Olsztyńska:
Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński’s Path to the Forest Lodge of Pranie

Considered by many a masterpiece, Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński’s long poem Kronika Olsztyńska (Olsztyn Chronicle) came into being in 1952. The poet wrote it in a ranger’s lodge called “Pranie,” located in the north-eastern part of Poland in the Province of Warmia-Masuria, a land of forests, lakes, and towns marked with medieval castles. Olsztyn is the capital city of Warmia-Masuria, some 95 kilometers away from Pranie.

In the context of Gałczyński’s creative output, Olsztyn Chronicle is both typical and extraordinary. It is typical because it tackles the poet’s favorite themes, his love for his wife Natalia and his love of nature; but it is extraordinary due to the absence of playful sarcasm, with which Gałczyński often targeted the trivialities and snobberies of the places and times he had witnessed, an approach that had established him as an important figure in Polish literature already before World War II.

Tracing the path that led Gałczyński to the Masurian woods helps one to understand better the significance of his “Masurian” experience as well as the placement of Olsztyn Chronicle in the poet’s opus. Speaking metaphorically, Gałczyński was already in the autumn of his life when he wrote the poem. He died of a heart attack—his third—on December 6, 1953, just a year later. Yet, despite his relatively young age, forty-seven at the time of his death, he had accumulated life-experiences against the backdrop of no less than four different epochs of Polish history.

As a matter of fact, when in 1905 Gałczyński came into the world, it was as a Russian citizen, since at that time Poland did not exist as an independent state. In 1795, the country had been partitioned between Russia, Prussia, and Austria; and the city of Warsaw—Gałczyński’s birthplace—became part of the Russian Empire. Born to a lower middle-class family, Gałczyński spent most of his youth hanging out on Towarowa Street, in one of the city’s less affluent neighborhoods. His father, a railroad technician, showed little interest in parenting. But Konstanty did receive a formal education, attending elementary schools in Warsaw and, during World War I, in Moscow. From 1922, he studied classical and English literatures at Warsaw University.  Meanwhile, in 1918 Poland regained its national independence, commencing the second historic epoch within Gałczyński’s lifetime.

In 1930 Konstanty married Natalia Avalov, of Georgian descent. In 1934, the couple moved to Vilnius—the current capital of Lithuania. But in the past the city had also been part of Poland, as was the case during the time of the Second Polish Republic (1918-1939).  In Vilnius, the Gałczyńskis’ daughter Kira was born. In 1936, the family returned to Warsaw—just three years before the German invasion of Poland and the outbreak of World War II marked the beginning of a third epoch of Polish history, engulfing Gałczyński’s life along with millions of others. Konstanty joined the Polish armed forces and became a prisoner of war. In Nazi Germany, he endured the toil and humiliations of a forced laborer. After the war he went to Belgium, and then France. Meanwhile, post-war Poland, to which he returned in 1946, had entered its fourth epoch as a communist state under the heavy political thumb of the Soviet Union.  Following the agreement that Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill signed in Yalta in 1945, borders shifted throughout Central and Eastern Europe once again. The Voivodeship of Warmia-Masuria—including the capital city of Olsztyn and the little forest lodge of Pranie—was established on what before the war was part of the German Republic, known as East Prussia.

But this post-war epoch indeed brought to bear not just a new map, but a new system, a new discourse.  In an attempt to attract spokespersons, the communist government lured writers and artists with major economic and social perks. But there was a stick as well as a carrot. From 1949 to 1956—the time of the Stalinist terror in Poland—the obligatory style was social realism, a type of writing that on one level meant to glorify and educate the Worker, and on another to glorify the State. Gałczyński complied, some of his works matching in fervor those by the famous Russian bard Mayakovsky. However, while paying attention to the “grandiose,” Gałczyński did not neglect the “ordinary.” He kept on writing about things and matters that seem inessential but are part of human world—a lamp, a plant pot, a candlestick. Other topics included romantic and familial love, as well as natural phenomena and the beauty of nature. Though seemingly fundamental, such themes were nonetheless completely out of tune with the dictates of social realism.

During this early post-war period, Gałczyński’s most important publishing engagement had been with the weekly Przekrój (Cross-section), where he created his cyclical, satirical “Teatrzyk Zielona Gęś” (The Green Goose Theatre).  It was the perfect forum for Gałczyński’s keen sardonic eye and playful sense of language. Language for him was first and foremost play. It was his raw material; his toy, so to speak. Meanwhile, the grandiose historical discourse of his time was evolving alongside the lives of ordinary people. Gałczyński observed both—and the ways in which they intertwined. He portrayed what he saw, oscillating between realistic observation, gentle lyricism, and biting satire.

Many of Gałczyński’s contemporaries came to accuse him of being a clown, a liar, a jester. During the Congress of Polish Writers in 1950, his fellow writers (e.g. Adam Ważyk and Jerzy Putrament) condemned the “bourgeois tendencies” in his poetry, as well as his prewar engagement with the reactionary journal Prosto z Mostu. Subsequently, Gałczyński’s access to Przekrój and other government-sanctioned journals became limited, honoraria and other financial support cut short.

In 1951 Gałczyński and his wife went to Warmia-Masuria for a break, and likely to escape the ideological witch-hunt. It was at that time that the ranger’s lodge Pranie—nowadays the site of the K.I. Gałczyński Museum—became the poet’s haven. While much has been made of writers going into an “internal emigration” during the Communist years, Galczyński’s path of exile took him into nature. But Pranie was a refuge in other ways. Gałczyński might have been a creative giant, but he was also frail, suffering not only from a heart condition but from anxiety and alcoholism as well. While at Pranie he began to write Olsztyn Chronicle, a collection of 21 shorter poems, of which the first seven are presented here in The Dodge. What emerged was a pean to nature and to Gałczyński’s beloved wife Natalia. It was a record of the healing power of nature, of forests and lakes.  And, luckily, those forests and lakes are still around, while the scourge of the political epoch in which Gałczyński wrote is not.  As the old Polish saying goes, “Jak nie będzie nas, będzie las.”  When we are gone, the forest will still be.

—Joanna Kurowska

Joanna Kurowska is a poet, scholar, and translator. She has published seven books of poetry, and her work has also appeared in The Conradian (UK), Kultura (Paris), Room (Canada), Acolada (Bucharest), Southern Quarterly Review, Fraza (Poland), Journal of Religion and the Arts, International Review, Journal of Conrad Studies (Poland), and many others. She has taught at the University of Chicago and Indiana University, Bloomington. Born in Olsztyn, she grew up surrounded by the legacy of the Polish poet Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński, and even attended a Lyceum named after him. She emigrated to the United States in 1988.

Published July 15 2023