Tomasz Różycki (born 1970) studied Romance philology at the Jagiellonian University. He is a poet, prose writer, essayist and translator of French literature (including poetry by Arthur Rimbaud, Victor Segalen and Stéphane Mallarmé).

Tomasz Różycki’s poetry has a clear connection to the past. He has often been viewed as an heir to modernist authors, sharing more poetic experience with his predecessors than his contemporaries. His work is literally and metaphorically connected to space, with many rhythmic, rhyming poems (containing both external and internal rhymes). They are often arranged in sequences of sonnets or odes, which also reveal connections to traditional Polish lyrical poetry.

Różycki’s debut poetry volume, Vaterland (“Fatherland”, 1997), can be described as “poetry of minor homelands”. Nevertheless, historical events, such as the displacements, resettlements and migration experiences that define the consciousness of the inhabitants of Lower Silesia, are always combined in Różycki’s work with an individual and transcendent way of seeing the world. Oneiric visions, dreamlike experiences on the borderline between reality and fantasy, hallucinations, and fantasies about the “other side” of reality form a layer of his poetry that is just as profound as the experience of a concrete, defined geographical space.

A particularly representative example of this combination of literary tradition, aesthetic sophistication (containing grotesque elements, irony, and an intricate layer of allusions, quotations, and hidden references), and the poet’s unique concept of time-compressing voyages is Dwanaście stacji (Twelve Stations, 2004). This epic poem describes the personal odyssey of a man (known simply as the Grandson) who is descended from inhabitants of the Recovered Territories in the west of Poland and experiences the burden of history, memory, and longing. He seeks to preserve the image of a past that is disappearing but gradually becomes aware of his own powerlessness, expressed through humour and the grotesque. Dwanaście stacji has been adapted for the theatre many times, including at the Helena Modrzejewska National Theatre in Krakow, directed by Eva Rysová with a script by Mateusz Pakuła (premiere: 10 December 2009), and at the Jan Kochanowski Theatre in Opole, directed by Mikołaj Grabowski (premiere: 22 June 2012).

Travel is also the central theme of many of Różycki’s poetry collections, such as Kolonie (Colonies, 2006), Księga obrotów (“The Book of Rotations”, 2010) and Ręka pszczelarza (“The Beekeeper’s Hand”, 2022). Kolonie immerses the reader in the dreamlike and sentimental atmosphere of journeys to faraway, exotic destinations. Some of the poems weave together to form a story of childhood dreams, fears and fantasies. Others recount the history of the displacement of Germans from the Oder region, which transformed Eastern Europe into a dark land haunted by ghosts. The narrator of these poems perceives the disintegration of reality and the vanishing of physical matter with increasing distress, while observing his own gradual transformation into nothingness. The distinctiveness of Różycki’s poetic voice is, of course, determined by the atmosphere of the world—divided into the transcendental and the material—but the aforementioned narrator has also been characterised in a rather unique way. This characterisation is linked to emotions: the poems are dominated by melancholy, nostalgia and lyrical anticipation of the transfiguration of the world. The narrator longs to return to places where he could experience a certain kind of ecstasy or fulfilment. He is also searching for a language other than his own: a language that allows him to express the truth, while at the same time enabling him to experience the world directly and sensually.

Tomasz Różycki has won numerous awards, including the Kościelski Foundation Award in 2004 for Dwanaście stacji, the Joseph Brodsky Award in 2006, the 3 Quarks Daily Arts & Literature Prize in 2010, the Wisława Szymborska Award for Ręka pszczelarza in 2023, and a Samuel Bogumił Linde Award (together with Marcel Beyer). His books have been nominated several times for the Nike Literary Award, his novel Złodzieje żarówek (“The Light Bulb Thieves”) won the Grand Continent Award in 2023, and in 2024 he received the Literary Award of the City of Warsaw. His poems and prose have been translated into many languages.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Vaterland (“Fatherland”), Łódź: Stowarzyszenie Literackie im. K. K. Baczyńskiego, 1997
• Anima (“Anima”), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Zielona Sowa,1999
• Chata umaita (“The Umaita Hut”), Warsaw: Lampa i Iskra Boża, 2001
• Świat i Antyświat (“The World and the Anti-World”), Warsaw: Lampa i Iskra Boża, 2003
• Dwanaście stacji (Twelve Stations), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2004
• Wiersze (“Poems”), Warsaw: Lampa i Iskra Boża, 2004
• Kolonie (Colonies), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2006
• Księga obrotów (“The Book of Rotations”), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2010
• Bestiarium (“Bestiary”), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2012
• Tomi. Notatki z miejsca postoju (“Notes from a Resting Place”), Warsaw: Fundacja Zeszytów Literackich, 2013
• Litery (“Letters”), Kraków: a5, 2016
• Kapitan X (“Captain X”), Kraków: Wydawnictwo a5, 2020
• Próba ognia. Błędna kartografia Europy (“Trial by Fire: The Flawed Cartography of Europe”), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Austeria, 2020
• Ijasz (“Elijah”), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2020
• Ręka pszczelarza (“The Beekeeper’s Hand”), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 2022
• Złodzieje żarówek (“The Light Bulb Thieves”), Wołowiec: Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2023
• Hulanki & Swawole (“Carousing & Revelry”), Kraków: Wydawnictwo a5, 2024

TRANSLATIONS INTO POLISH

• Stephane Mallarmée, Rzut kośćmi nigdy nie zniesie przypadku, Korporacja Ha!Art, Kraków 2005

TRANSLATIONS

English:

• The Forgotten Keys: Selected Poetry of Tomasz Rozycki, trans. Mira Rosenthal, Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2007
• Colonies (Kolonie), trans. Mira Rosenthal, Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2013
• Twelve Stations (Dwanaście stacji), trans. Bill Johnston, Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2013
• To the Letter: Poems, trans. Mira Rosenthal, Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2023

Chinese:

• Bei yi wang de di tu = Scorched Maps (a selection of poems in three languages), Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2013; Xianggang: Xianggang Zhong wen da xue chu ban she, 2013

French:

• Les Colonies (Kolonie), trans. Jacques Burko, Paris: L’improviste, 2006
• Bestiarium, trans. Maryla Laurent, Lyon: Le Lierre embrassant la muraille, 2018

Spanish:

• Colonias (Kolonie), trans. Xavier Farré, Madrid: Vaso Roto Ediciones, 2015

Dutch:

• Kolonies = Kolonie, trans. Alexandre Popowycz, Leuven: P, 2019

German:

• Zwölf Stationen (Dwanaście stacji), trans. Olaf Kühl, München: Sammlung Luchterhand, 2009
• Bestiarium, trans. Marlena Breuer, Berlin: Edition fotoTapeta, 2016
• Der Kerl, der sich die Welt gekauft hat (Wiersze wybrane), trans. Bernhard Hartmann, Berlin: Edition.fotoTAPETA, 2018

Serbian:

• Anima, a postoji (selected poems), trans. Biserka Rajčić, Belgrad: KOW, 2013

Slovakian:

• Protivietor (selected poems), trans. Katarína Laučíková, Bratislava: Ars Poetica, 2007

Italian:

• Antimondo, trans. Leonardo Masi, Alessandro Ajres, Florencja: Edizioni dela Meridiana, 2009