AustLit

An essay which responds to D.H. Lawrence's representation of Australian landscapes, and Patrick White's novels The Vivisector and Voss. The author expresses admiration for White's 'arcydzieło' ('masterpiece'), Voss.

An essay about the author's experiences of reading the work of Swedish physician and psychiatrist Axel Munthe (1857-1949). The author evokes his strong feelings of engagement with Munthe, and describes a visit to the Italian island of Anacapri, undertaken to see Munthe's house, San Michele. The essay's title refers to this house. The essay concludes with biographical reflections on Munthe.

The poem appears to be a tribute to the memory of a young man killed, apparently in war, in another time and place than the one inhabited by the poem's speaker. In one stanza, a eucalyptus stands among pine trees in the 'okres kambryjski pamięci' ('the Cambrian period of memory'). This image seems to blend elements of Australian and European, as well as prehistoric, landscapes.

A poem in five, untitled parts. The speaker appears to be standing by the Derwent River in Tasmania, seeing it simultaneously as the River Styx of Greek mythology, which was thought to form the boundary between Earth and the Underworld. Lines in one stanza declare: 'lecz beskid dotknięty pożarem gdzie diabeł tasmański/tropi leniwe ścieżki do nieba/jest tylko przedpolem rzeki styx/dopływu rzeki derwent' ('but the beskid [the name of a mountain range in Poland] touched by fire where the tasmanian devil/makes its lazy tracks to the sky/is only the foreground of the river styx/an inlet of the derwent river'). The reference to the Polish mountain range 'Beskid' appears to imply that the speaker identifies a mountain in Tasmania with a Polish mountain; the mixing of landscapes, Australian, Polish and those drawn from Greek mythology, obliquely suggests migrant experiences and perceptions.

A poem responding to the funeral of major 20th century Polish poet Kazimierz Wierzyński, who died in London in 1969. Wierzyński escaped Nazi-occupied Poland at the outbreak of World War II, fleeing through France and Portugal and settling in the United States in 1941, where he lived until 1964, when he returned to Europe. The pain of exile from Poland is a significant theme of his postwar poetry. Marek's poem expresses grief over Wierzyński's death, and some identification with his experiences in exile, yet at the same time some apparent ambivalence over his poetry.