 | Czarne
Wołowiec 2011
120x195
228 pp
ISBN: 978-83-7536-235-0
Translation rights: Polishrights.com |
| Małgorzata Baranowska
This Is Your Life
Excerpt
Małgorzata Baranowska’s book is not a self-help manual. It is an extraordinary testament, a personal narrative bordering on an essay about something extremely private and painful; after all, it is impossible to share illness, just as it is impossible to share pain. But although the experience of suffering cannot be transmitted – in any case, as Baranowska says, each person experiences illness in a way that is determined by his or her own nature – it is possible to share information about what it is like to live with suffering, and this sort of information can be helpful to others. In her professional life Baranowska is a superb poet and essayist. Here she presents her most private point of view and does it in a fascinating way, though in this instance the word fascinating seems inappropriate, if not indecent, considering the fact that she is writing about years and years of battling with lupus, an illness which attacks in a complex way, gradually destroying the organism, causing chest pain every time you take a deeper breath, ulceration of the mucous membrane in the nose and mouth, hypersensitivity to sunlight, anaemia, hair loss, muscle pain, arthritis, swelling of the lymph nodes, kidney damage, headaches, chronic fever and constant fatigue. And yet it is hard to put this book down, probably because it is not in fact a chronicle of suffering. Baranowska regards her life – and her illness – as an adventure.
“Maybe there is no point asking why I am ill. Maybe the real question is why should I be healthy? After all, it’s a miracle that some people are actually healthy. When I was struck down by illness, I realised I had to fight it, and that nothing in my previous experience was of any use to me at all. Lupus attacks a person’s mental state as well. We sick people are entirely on our own, we are naked, body and soul. The threat does not come from the outside. It is something that is inside us and that attacks us from within. To fight this illness, you have to put up a defence against yourself.” Baranowska tells the story of her battle with illness as the tale of how she structured her own life to allow her to live as fully as possible, without giving up the things that matter to everyone: close relationships with people, being in contact with art and with your own creativity – in order to remain yourself and, even when chained to a hospital bed, still be in control of an infinite expanse, as one of Baranowska’s friends puts it.
Marek Zaleski
Małgorzata Baranowska (1945-2012), a poet and essayist. As a historian of literature her topics included surrealist poetry and the work of Wisława Szymborska. She wrote more than a dozen books. She died on 22nd of January, 2012.
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