Adam Zagajewski. Poetry Talks to Philosophy – Initial Remarks

It is hard to believe that two years have already passed since Adam Zagajewski's death.We have become accustomed to the remarkable regularity with which he published his volumes of poetry and essays.In Krakw, he still took part in literary and artistic events -and not always as their protagonist, very often as a listener, who was fascinated by all manifestations of a "spiritual life, " to use a term, admittedly unfashionable, and yet so dear to him.The war in Ukraine, the outbreak of which he did not survive, the growing refugee crisis and other dramatic events of recent years have shown how much we need his wise attempts to "praise the mutilated world".The phrases from his poem "Refugees": "and always that special slouch/ as if leaning toward another, better planet,/ with less ambitious generals,/ less snow, less wind, fewer cannons,/ less History" (trans.Clare Cavanagh) or the famous last line of the poem "To Go to Lvov": "It [Lvov] is everywhere" (trans.R. Gorczyska) seem surprisingly up-to-date in describing reality in 2023.We think of Zagajewski as a poet, but we must not forget that he graduated from Jagiellonian University with a degree in philosophy and wrote his second master's degree (in psychology) under the guidance of Roman Ingarden's student Danuta Gierulanka.His relationship with philosophy is, of course, not limited to his education.In his work, he engages in dialogues with specific philosophers, returns to basic philosophical questions, and challenges certainties that we accept unreflectively.This issue of Konteksty Kultury is the result of a collaboration between scholars from Jagiellonian University and the University of Chicago, thus bringing together the academic communities of his Alma Mater and the American university where he taught from 2007 for around ten years.It is worth mentioning that at the University of Chicago, he was a member of the prestigious Committee on Social Thought, staffed primarily by philosophers, sociologists, historians

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