This volume starts off with an excellent poem, Cobweb / Pajęczyna, about "four grey maidens" - Lack, Poverty, Care, and Guilt. At first, these "four phantoms / hiding in the foundations / are waiting"; but then, as they find themselves missing out on human life, "the uninvited guests enter the house" and in the end, "the house turns into a cobweb". This is one of those Różewiczian poems that by using the simplest of words and imagery from everyday life, constructs a perturbing image of transience devoid of solace and the sublime. Różewicz has maintained his capacity for rancorous wonder. The author of Anxiety / Niepokój has never had patience with or been able to endure the all-encroaching, generally accepted, and what's worse, generally expected, rubbish heap of feelings, thoughts and actions. Many of his poems are mini-studies on the shameless and pointless exhibitionism to which unthinking television viewers and apparently sophisticated readers are exposed by refined artists and prominent politicians alike.

Różewicz hasn't won the Nobel Prize yet, which explains why his successive books aren't welcomed in the media with a universal storm of applause and praise. But neither can this poet complain that no one is interested in him. Despite the lack of any particular "Różewicz trend", his "grey zone" is still worth discovering and studying diligently. Like the rare socially engaged rap-artist, Różewicz carefully, albeit with loathing, observes contemporary Poland and the world in order to describe it with a merciless passion. (Marcin Baran)

Source: www.polska2000.pl
Copyright: Stowarzyszenie Willa Decjusza

• Tadeusz Różewicz
  Szara strefa / The Grey Zone
  Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, Wrocław 2002
  © Tadeusz Różewicz
  135 x 212, 117 pages, hardcover
  ISBN 83-7023-966-8