June 2022 marks the 100th birthday and 39th death anniversary of Miron Białoszewski – a poet, prose writer, playwright and theatre actor. Warsaw councillors honoured his memory and made 2022 the Year of Miron Białoszewski.

“The Council of the Capital City of Warsaw would like to pay tribute to the outstanding Varsovian by making 2022 the Year of Miron Białoszewski. If any city were to honour Białoszewski in such a way, it could be Warsaw only” the councillors emphasized in their unanimously adopted decision.

Many readers associate Białoszewski mainly with his prose “Diary from the Warsaw Uprising”. It is a picture of the horror of the Warsaw Uprising seen through the eyes of civilians, where joy is mixed with tragedy, and heroism is the hardships of everyday existence, distant from any lyrical pathos. One of the distinguishing features of Białoszewski’s poetry is “photographing” reality, human emotions and behaviour.

The language of Białoszewski’s poems often uses derailed speech, disturbed by errors or awkwardness, gibberish, lopsided language and accidental linguistic coincidences, inertia and automatism. The author often referred to spoken, colloquial and children’s language. His work is like an unposed photograph of Varsovians of the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Often, it may not be pretty, but always true and therefore fascinatingly interesting, explained the representants of the Warsaw City Hall.

Throughout his life, Białoszewski remained a “separate poet”, who failed to be included in any drawer labelled by a term defining his belonging to any creative group or trend. Although he was associated with the war generation (including Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, Tadeusz Różewicz, Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Gajca), he differed significantly from them in the poetics of his own work.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński