Adam Zagajewski: from Another Beauty

(Cats sunning themselves on the rooftop outside our hotel room in Budapest.)

I've been reading the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski's essays again, finding in their refusal to be corralled by thesis, theory, or theme a way into a poet's life, his history and "sensorium," a word that fascinates me. I salute his devotion to the physical world, what goes on beneath our notice so much of the time--the dirt under our feet, the air moving around our bodies, the animals sliding secretly along their paths apart from us. Here are some sentences from his Another Beauty, a collection of essays.

"There was something mysterious in the way that the earth and things existed, avidly and intensively. They seized each moment, exploited every opportunity, if only to enjoy, in a lazy, catlike way, the July heat or even November's drizzling rain, the crackling dry frost of a February night. They cynically agreed to every minute of the year, every change in the season or the weather, if only they could keep on being. Anything is better than the nothingness that so preoccupies the modern philosphers. No, the earth and things had no use for nothingness; their interest lay with clouds and rain, the enthralling progress of nights and days. Steel bridges stretched blissfully each time the temperature rose, wood balconies creaked gently, as if to say "You, people, keep right on murdering one another, but you'll have to forgive us for staying on the sidelines, for steering clear of those ever-changing theories to which we pay no heed. Our task is far too serious for us to mind the fickle temper of the times; we, things, are reallity's roots, we are the pillars of being. We've got no use for young literary critics with their irony. Long duration is our fate and not the short-lived nuptial flight of fledgling poets... ."