Ewa Sonnenberg, Means Tenderness - by Michał Tabaczyński

From among the modern Polish poets whom we use to call young ( which, by the way, has excellent effect on their creativity), and also from among the less numerous poetesses of this generation, Ewa Sonnenberg is the most….mysterious person. The absolute lack of any originality presented by this description of her, although so absolutely obvious, can be the evidence of the adequacy of the diagnosis – I do not put it here with a light stroke of a pen, but with the largest effort required by total banality. This is a somehow paradoxical mysteriousness, open and fully exposed, disclosed on blogs; the reader of this sketch cannot expect any explanations of this phenomenon, he will only receive the more deeply rooted feeling of this mysteriousness. And this is at least something – anyhow, it is the core of this poetry.
Ewa Sonnenberg is a quiet, tenacious ( which from the very start suggests her eastern inspirations) destroyer of numerous myths. Let` s take, for example, the myth saying that in our times the impression of mystery cannot be achieved by the simple, the simplest possible methods – well, it can, and she does it: the trivially simple in its idea, cutting in two of her own photo from the debut volume of poetry is, in this respect, a symbol of the whole artistic path she follows.
The most strongly rooted myth which Sonnenberg challenged and defeated is the myth of harmful effect of creative writing classes on the creative abilities and individuality of a poet. Yes, she is a graduate of the first Polish school of creative writing. Yes, this school was accused of breaking the literary backbones of its students or, on the opposite, of absolute lack of influence on their writings. Yes, it has not produced many giants of writing. But it is also a fact that Ewa Sonnenberg was not in any way harmed by the diploma of this school, that it has not dulled her individuality as a writer, just the opposite, only made it sharper – as she is sharp as a razor blade. For this reason, without any feeling of guilt, our poet can teach in this school new generations of students? She can and she teaches!
The destroyer of myths comes from Ząbkowice Śląskie – on the surface, this seems to be of marginal importance. One can draw some conclusions from it or produce imaginary genealogy of her work , referring to the mixture of cultures and the myth of the frontier areas ( this myth is also invalidated by Ewa Sonnenberg – other, and far more important frontier areas are set by her work – let us take the frontier areas of bodies and sexes). The thing is however of symbolic nature. Our poet is a person from Wrocław, from Krakow, this is true, but in some sense she is also a person from Ząbkowice. In what sense? Well, because she is provincial. Ewa Sonnenberg is a poet of the province – this statement explains her own and her poetry` s tangled story .The term itself has many meanings and can easily lead us down a dead end. Let us be more precise then. She is a provincial poet and as such, resides on the margins of the events of literary life ( even if actively participating in it), margins of the critics` interest ( even if significant critics write about her) outskirts of discussions. She is a provincial poet and is not ashamed of her provinciality, seeing what a wonderful gift it can be, it makes her crave for the world, its dynamism and modernity. She is a provincial poet and therefore, thanks to it, she has the strength ( also intellectual) to long for the centre, she has her reasons to belong to it – if only as a correspondent member.
In her debut collection of poetry Hazard , she included the poem Prowincja ( The Province) the last stanza of which rebelliously ( it is a sad rebellion, bitter and helpless) says ( most probably to her mother to whom the poem is dedicated)

All your life you look at the same landscape behind the window
the same homeless and crippled tree, You simply made friends
with it and you have someone to talk to
(only in a whisper, as they may think you` ve gone mad and
you will find yourself in hospital, stuffed blank with psychotropic
drugs)

It is a sad poem, but at the same time extremely tender and full of sensitivity, because tenderness – this should be remembered – is perhaps the most significant principle in Ewa Sonnenberg` s poetry and sensitivity, in the two meanings of the word, perceived as a specific attitude to the objects and people in this world, but at the same time discussed when we talk of the properties of a photographic film. How do tenderness and sensitivity operate as the principles of a poem ( or more extensively) of poetry ? On the one hand, they allow to demonstrate the attitude of sympathy and understanding towards the world and the people. On the other hand, they cause the clarity and expression ( referring to this photographic metaphor I would say – sharpness) of the language used for the presentation. And still another consequence is some kind of trust put in the language, thanks to which not a single word is excluded from finding its place in her poems – there are no words that would be too sentimental, too banal or too risky.

Ewa Sonnenberg has written tenderly, but she has also given its metapoetic ( as she treats tenderness as the principle of a poem, ergo – a poetic category) description just like in the poem, well, just Czułość (Tenderness):

Her tiny feet, the smooth silk of her breath flows down her arms to the papillary lines
Her little brain, not bigger than an eye lash keeps thinking of one thing
Her transparent mouth sing with a feeble voice of rain, confessing to
The night, as the day blinds her and makes her feel ashamed
Why don` t you drown out, if only with one word,
The calling of your body?

And in the poem Niepewność ( Uncertainty) we also come across such metapoetic fragment:

My funny little poem, I shall warm you with my hands
Apologizing to life that we wrote it instead of living it
Your naïve, tender attempts to peep at naked words
Tickled my vanity […]

Although it is not easy to decide what is the poet` s attitude towards reality, in the sense that one cannot unambiguously locate the precise place where such tenderness can be found, and what are the mutual relations between the feeling ( tenderness) and its object ( the world). If I were to choose, I would point to the fact that they are somehow combined. It would be appropriate to quote Franz Brentan here: “There is one thing we must admit without doubt. The object to which feelings refer need not always be an exterior object. Also when I hear a nice sound, the pleasure I experience is not really the pleasure taken from the sound itself but the pleasure found in hearing it” I must say I don` t know whether the quotation is relevant and whether it is really needed here ( as one of Ewa Sonnenberg` s characteristics is that it is extremely easy to find quotations applying to her) Anyhow, I know why I have chosen just this quotation. First, because of the above mentioned “nice sound” ; the poet is a trained pianist which theoretically should be significant for the comprehension of her poetry. Second, for many years she studied philosophy, one can say she was a connoisseur of philosophy ( both the formal science and just simply philosophy), so Brentano fits here as well.

The undeniable benefit of our being Ewa Sonnenberg` s contemporaries is the fact that we know how she looks like, what she reads, where she goes, and even-what she wears. And she wears chic showing a bit of ostentatious finesse, I, the resident of severe north, would say that she wears Krakovian style. Why do I talk about it? To provide the significant aesthetic context to her mature works, which – now please notice this contrast – bears so strong traces of Far-East inspirations. ( For the sake of those who consider the poet` s appearance to be a trivium, not worth mentioning, we should refer to the words of the poet who was important for her and who undoubtedly inspired her poems – Josif Brodsky -who wrote: “ Theoretically, the author` s outer appearance should be of no importance to his readers : reading as well as writing is not a narcist activity ; nevertheless,, it is enough to enjoy the sufficient number of poems by a given poet to start wondering how he or she may look like. It is probably connected with the readers suspecting that to admire a work of art is the same as to recognize the truth or a certain degree of truth expressed in art. Uncertain by nature, we want to see the artist whom we identify with his work – just to know at the next occasion how the truth looks like in reality”)

Our awareness of the poet` s appearance, and what` s more, the awareness of the deep contrast between her Krakovian, as I said, clothes and the nun like modesty of her latest poems, is a significant contribution to their reading and understanding. The extensive gap between the two styles ( clothes and writings) is, in a way, a source of originality of this poetry. All changes of poetics, subjects, techniques, the revolutions of elocution and the scale of stylistic registers – all these have finally led Ewa Sonnenberg to the poetry of the East. Her Eastern poems, the temples of contemplation and order, are underlined by constant mobility, insupressible activity, unquenched and unquenchable agitation. Under the surface of ascetic ( ascetically white cards) of the poems from the collection “Pisane na piasku” ( Written on Sand) , boils and steams the uncalmed life. Through the cracks of single lines on the otherwise white page, life pushes to the surface under extreme pressure. I could have repeated this rhetorical structure over and over again; this could be repeated obsessively, because Sonnenberg` s poetry is obsessively preoccupied with life ( and this is not such an obvious field of interest, especially in her generation).
Obviously, the poet understands this “life” in many ways, though most often and most richly – in conformity with the convention of these poems- as the world or the road; especially the road takes the privileged place in her poetic vocabulary.:

Traveling is also a part of this book

What can you take with you for a never ending journey?
In what way can you tell the never ending story?

or:

He was like the road she took as a child when running to buy sweets
He was like the road

This last quotation also leads to other traces – particularly to the trace of love ( “Sometimes traces may change into people” – she writes a few lines earlier). Because love is the principle and the sense of life, it is this unending road ( journey? story?) that also boils under the surface, adding intensity to her poems.
Love, journey, world, tenderness – as one can see, poetry deals with fundamental and simplest matters. It is a great challenge for poetry, the greatest perhaps. This catalogue of ordinary things can be extended: order ( like in the tea making ceremony), time ( like in haiku of which somewhere in her Internet blog she wrote that it was “ a magic object for stopping the time” ), like expectation ( which is the function of love, world, life itself). All the slippery topics, each step presents danger.
The undeniable benefit of our being Ewa Sonnenberg` s contemporaries, apart from the possibility of meeting her, is also the knowledge of gossip about her life (for the sake of those who consider this a trivium, I recommend going back to Brodsky). People were talking about her unusual mobility – it is nothing strange for a reader of her poetry. Rumour had it that the motif of the road, so valuable in her poetry, is known to her from experience. That she can follow the road with fantasy. That she can travel from Krakow to Wrocław by a taxi ( which is, by the way, an excellent combination of Krakovian fantasy with Wroclavian sense of comfort and practicality. No matter how much truth there is in it, the metaphor is excellent How unearthly rides these must be, that is how I imagine them- crossing over any possible spheres and tariffs, ignoring not only speed limits but also limits of imagination! Not a tram on fire, not a chariot of fire, but a rickety taxi carries Ewa between Krakow and Wrocław, at the top gear, with a silent driver, who is however a good listener, concentrated, monk like, over the wheel!