Yet Zagajewski’s imagination is most at home in Poland. Many writers-Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie-have realized how enriching it can be to move between two very different countries. Indeed, his bilocational lifestyle is enviable. He has not been victimized by history as much as some. But I’m not settled either-it takes several generations to move from one condition to the other.” It is a slight exaggeration, then, to say that Zagajewski is himself displaced, and we must admire his courage in drawing lines between historical facts and hardto -define mental states. And it is crucial to understanding his persistent sense of inbetweenness : “I’m not an exile. This “vestigial” inheritance is vigorous enough to inform nearly all of Zagajewski’s writing. Here he catches us off guard by stating, “I didn’t suffer I was an observer, not an emigrant,” since after all “displacement isn’t inherited, or perhaps it’s only passed on vestigially.” Perhaps. And he allows for a context of other displacements-geographic, socioeconomic, cultural-to situate that of his family, which helps gain further readerly empathy (because how many of us have no context of displacement, however oblique?).

He even relates an anecdote in which the strength of this myth creates a rift between him and his friends while visiting Lvov-friends who, he realizes, cannot participate in the myth, just as we cannot either. Their mythology of the lost home was passed down to Adam, whose most famous poem may be “To Go to Lvov.” Now, he knows very well that this is a private myth, and the facts of history only partially explain the workings of human psychology. The Zagajewskis mourned the loss of their home city deeply. Poland “lost” Lvov (now called Lviv), a city in presentday Ukraine known as a cultural capital, and “gained” Gliwice, a rather less inspiring industrial town near the German border, one soon filled with resettled Lvovians. A word for first-time readers: the Zagajewski family was forcibly resettled shortly after the poet’s birth in 1945, when the borders of Poland were redrawn after World War II. Longtime readers will recognize Zagajewski’s enduring obsession with Lvov. Chief among these themes is the author’s relation to his own past. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Īuthor so openly show us how his mind works, with no pretense of academic objectivity or absolute correctness.

Settlers 7 estina