At the Border Posts of Europe and Asia
The Poet Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The Polish poet and writer Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, who was born in Ukraine and whose extensive work reflects the European conscious in the 20th century, wandered a good part of his life between two worlds: between Eastern and Western Europe. For him, Kiev and Petersburg, two metropolises in the eastern part of the continent were symbols of a unity between East and West, youth and old-age, life and death, that was hard to achieve. They served him as a pretext for approaching historical, metaphysical, and ethical lines of inquiry. Kiev appears in his poetry as the gateway to the East and as the place where he was initiated into the world of poetry. Petersburg by contrast is a place of dark powers and fatalist history, a place where one’s own existence and identity are constantly under threat.
(Osteuropa 9/2005, pp. 61–80)