Sonnenberg Planet

Anyhow, one day,
Perhaps a hundred years from now
You will be learning by heart
My uninteresting biography
- Sonia Berg

So we have here a kind of a deceitful triad: Rachela-Sonia Berg-Ewa Sonnenberg, with the last one appearing in at least two roles: in a poem and in life. Through such accumulation of autocreation the author wins a number of things at the same time. First – she mythologizes her own self, enters her name, once and for all, in the world of her poetry and through it, again wins some benefits, and for sure something that tickles the vanity of every writer – the fact that readers identify real people, real places and objects surrounding the author with the people, places and objects belonging to the world of poetry, and through it undergoing a certain mythologization and evoking a kind of respect or even a cult. (…) I will put it straight: everybody who knows Ewa Sonnenberg, even a little, everybody- I say – knows her travels, suitcases, attractive diaries, hair dyed a different colour every few weeks, chewing gums, chocolate bars, vanity cases, perfumes, CDs with Marlena Dietrich` s songs and so on and so forth.
Michał Witkowski “Kurwy i Giocondy” - „Studium” no. 6 (20) 2000

The attack made by Sonnenberg against these and other systems, all kinds of schematic patters, her courage, ambition, (…) poetry is now the limit reached by the volcano force confession of the long suppressed spirit of a girl and a woman.
Karol Maliszewski, “Parnas-Plejada-Sonnenberg i reszta” – Fa-art. No. 4 (26) 1996

Her poetry is described as masculine, as it does not avoid strong images. I don` t agree with it.
Masculine, feminine, this makes me think of the division of toilets or hairstylists and not aesthetic categories. Paraphrasing Arthur Rimbaud, she says about herself : “ me, it is someone worse”. She does not identify herself either with the rough draft generation or any literary group. She lives on the top of a glass mountain, above the shop selling china.
Magda-Jaros-Kropidłowska, “Dekadentki są wśród nas” – “Twój Styl” no.1 (114) 2000

Sonnenberg` s poetry is a cartoon showing the life of the upper classes, torn to pieces by a lady and glued together by a child
Michał Witkowski, “Rita Baum” no. 1, 1998

Ewa Sonnenberg was born to us in the literature full grown, like Minerva springing out of Jupiter` s head. Her first collection of poems “Hazard” has no signs of a debut, . The title poem “ Hazard” ( gambling) is a love poem, or rather an anti-love poem, sneering at the world dripping with sex. The author probably means a wider metaphor , all the life around us, superficial, thoughtless, heartless existence may be like gambling, a fatal addiction.
Maciej Cisło, “Sonoryzm i Verdi”- “Studium” no. 4, 1996

What is your ideal of a man? – was a trick question put to Ewa by a Wrocław journalist in the interview for “Slowo Polskie”.
First, must always wear bracelets, second - must always have a total mess in the handbag, and third – must be a woman! – answered Ewa. It was because of this interview that she was fired from work.
Michał Witkowski, “Kurwy i Giocondy” – „Studium” no.6 (20) 2000

Reading your poems, one has the impression of the carnival of variety, social extravaganza, the ubiquitous colourful bohemia….This picture of poets life, is it stylization or reality?
A poem is a ticket allowing entry to different climates and temptations of imagination. Unfortunately, poetry and life don` t tally, the written text goes its way, finds new muses, new recipients, new owners and the writer is left alone. One does not know who cheats whom, a poet poetry or poetry a poet.
A conversation with Stanisław Bereś, The Lower Silesia supplement to “Gazeta Wyborcza” 18th May 2000

Apart from being a graduate of Wrocław Musical Academy, Ewa Sonnenberg is one of the first graduates of Creative Writing at the Institute of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University in Krakow. This is perhaps an important information for those doubting she can write poetry. ( she has a diploma to prove it!)
Maria Cyranowicz, “Planeta Sonnenberg” – “Fa-art” nop. 1 (35) 1999

(…) she also completed the courses of eye squinting, self-defense, dance and diving. She not only holds the diploma in writing but also a collection of crocodiles, jackets and sweet idiots. The rich collection of umbrellas, butterflies and orchids should be enlarged by roller skates, swings and cream cakes.
Lord G, “ Dziewczyna w stylu Kemp” – „DJ” 2000

I admire painted finger nails in men – said Sonnenberg
Coco Chanel – said Klejnberg, showing her two fingers in which he usually held a West Light
Jarosław Klejnberg “Cały las pełen dziadka” – “Dykcja” nos. 7-8 1997

And perhaps this was because of the painted smile – reminding of clown` s smile , that was addend to the poet` s face on the book cover? (…) The one who is our guide through the poems – Rachela? Alicia? – has friends and occasionally lovers. On the cover – the author – or perhaps Lindsay Kemp himself? – neither a man nor a woman, somebody third, somebody different.
Izabela Filipiak, “Kraina tysiąca płci” – Res publika” 1998

„Lindsay Kemp preferred rather silk shawls and designer` s monocle , high class perfume which need not be bought in Paris as all those most trendy he could find at the chemist` s , around 150 m away from his apartment and only 10 from the hamburger bar. So equipped, our hero can take a slow walk to “ Café de France” to enjoy, no, not absinthe, but one of many drinks offered there, on entrance accompanied by “ fragile ephebes of Diana` s body forms”, drink to ( pinned to the wall) Touluse-Lautrec` s dancer, and after a few minutes get a little tipsy and, for a change, order a glass of “Absolut”.
Marta Mizuro, “Próbka perfum od Lindsaya Kempa” – “Dykcja” nos. 7-8, 1997

Then you launch an attack „ Instead of gray matter only the spermatozoons”!
I must have just been reading a medical dictionary! But to be serious, I suggest that today, being an ignorant and dandyish poet is trendy. It is much more difficult to find those responsible for what they are saying. What annoys me most, is lack of determination and honesty.
A conversation with Iza Michalewicz, “Cosmopolitan”, no. 6. June 2000

The hero (heroine) of these poems ( from “Hazard”) gives backhanded blows, like a man, sometimes doing it with some exaggeration, Freudian expressive virulence which is roughly read: why have I not been born with other motivation between my legs (…); tough and ruthless in exposing the wickedness of literary and social conventions; this fury I have mentioned before, from the form of description moves to its contents, becoming the total structure of fury.
Karol Maliszewski, “Korytarz” – “Opcje” no. 1 (16) March 1997

Sonnenberg!! We will give you injections to get all those writings and dances out of your head!!
from a letter to the author

The poems in the second part of “Hazard” are somehow inconvenient and I think, inauspicious. It is my impression that they do not wish everybody well, though they were written on the occasion of the December Holiday or “The End of the World”. Sorry, not the end of the world but the change of spirits in Central Europe caused by the change of the political system in Poland. And that is what I don` t like about it – politics in poetry, journalism and a hospital. There is an evident patronage of Herbert and Różewicz over it, so judgement and gloom in one.
Maria Cyranowicz, “Planeta Sonnenberg”-“Fa-art”. No. 1 (35) 1999

105 revolutionaries bang on the same door
105 revolutionaries did not have hot coffee and they are furious
105 revolutionaries make up a nice, catchy name for a guillotine
105 revolutionaries are going to spend holidays in the Versailles
105 revolutionaries enter the stately rooms in mud covered boots
Ewa Sonnenberg “Przewodnik liryczny po Europie”

The world of „Hazard” has in it something of a murky carnival in which the traditional relations of sacrum and profanum have been put au rebour. Out of the colourful procession of masks dancing a postindustrial urban dance macabre, the poet selects her next alter ego.
Piotr Zazula, “Poezja kresu” – “Arkusz” no. 9 (58), September 1996

Sonnenberg managed to change her clothes, put on new eyelashes. She softly fondled the microphone. Mercury came up my throat.
K.M. “Pepe” / a poetic paradocumentary - “Nowy Nurt”, 1995

I write to be beautiful, famous an rich
for my mom so that she can boast in front of her neighbours
and assistants from supermarkets, for teachers of Polish and critics so that they
can support their families
because it is more showy to pick up boys and girls, like Whitman, I am not satisfied by ordinary majority, I want to have the love of all women and all men
Ewa Sonnenberg “Po co piszę”-“ Kwartalnik Artystyczny” 1 (17) 1998

The basic key to E.S` s poems can be found in psychology. Present in her poetry is a deep portrait of woman` s soul. It is not only the author` s soul as we come across souls of many different women. A lot of verses in her poetry make ready dicta, aphorisms, mottos.
Janusz Styczeń, “Kto się kryje w tym zwierciadle?” – „Kwartalnik Artystyczny”
no. 3 (15) 1997

And no woman?
Not in this book, but my poetry is full of portraits of different women! Starting with the Holy Stranger from Wrocław` s Railway Station, through Rachela chased out to the brink of the world, a girl with matches, a minor Gioconda, the melancholic sexless cyberwomen, a lovely witch, a lustful mare, Baudelaire` s femme fatale, a stinking carrion, and finally the mad bitches.
A conversation with Iza Michalewicz, “Cosmopolitan”, no. 6. June 2000

We learn from E.S` s poems that “Adam probably never existed”. This provoking suggestion – if we treat it as polemics with the Book of Genesis- is not only the effect of “ demasculinization” of the “Planet”` s poetic world, in which men are in danger of complete elimination, but also – which points to the same thing – results of identifying masculinity with dominating feminity.
Wojciech Browarny, “Planeta kobiet” – “Rita Baum” no. 1, autumn 1998

„ Planeta” belongs to collections of poetry which are so personal that their source is beyond any doubt. Probably life itself has dictated these particularly intimate twenty something poems.
Maria Cyranowicz, “Planeta Sonnenberg”-“Fa-art” no. 1 (35) 1999

(…) twenty years later you come across a book of poetry which can replace the whole bloody art and your whole CV arranged from newspaper clippings. Then, you use all available means to get the author` s address only to lack words to say thank you for the self-confidence that has been restored to you, (…) only to learn that a man can be expressed by a woman.
Excerpt from reader` s letter to the author

When reading “Planet” attention should be brought to the recurrent in the poet` s work , thread of “flat breasts”. (…) This multifunctional role of the “flat breasts” motif, oscillating between reaction to a social situation and the wilful ( in the poem) sacrifice made as the result of emotions, is not only the evidence of the author` s poetic skills but also of her emotional maturity.
Wojciech Browarny, “Planeta kobiet” – “Rita Baum” no. 1 autumn 1998

Is it divine androgeny?
Art is often androgenic, what other name can be given to the women from Leonardo da Vinci`s portraits, Lotto` s boys or Teddy from Thomas Mann` s “Death in Venice”. Even Venus of Milo looks like a mischievious boy about to kick the ball and smash all Louvre` s window panes.
A conversation with Stanisław Bereś, The Lower Silesia supplement to “Gazeta Wyborcza” 18th May 2000

With this collection of poems the poet reminds us of something we have partly forgotten, that the language of poetry is also a secret language, a kind of code, a language for two. That it can be the expression of such love in which the lovers -sinning against the burgeois custom-
bring back to life the old world of Platonian ideas.
Marian Kisiel, from the afterword to “Planet”, Katowice 1997

But here, on the Earth, wonders around among us ( males) and clears the paths, the somehow very close though “soiled” and earthly – Ewa Sonnenberg, who , as it seems, is not afraid of anything; in this sense, the “future” belongs to her. Perhaps only she can unite all possible options, the feminizing and the masculinizing, the barbarizing with the classicistic, the realm of spirit with the petty realism.
Karol Maliszewski, “Parnas-Plejada-Sonnenberg i reszta”-Fa-art” no.4 (26) 1996

„ Without your poems I would have been someone else. Your poems like roadsigns, instruments for operating on an open soul, magnifying glasses, books of instruction how to dance the tango. You teach me about the blood, the words, perhaps, first of all, you teach me how to find the words. How to find myself in these words and be born”

from a reader` s letter to the author .
“ I appreciate the poet` s social flair, a it shows and at the same time proves that poetry does not only mean emotions, inner “ landscapes of the soul” but also the domain of civilizational diagnoses, conclusions telling us much about the world in which we have to live”
Anna Kałuża – “Śląsk”, 2001

Towards the end of the century, Ewa Sonnenberg published a book of poetry “Smycz” ( The Leash). The title becomes meaningful when the contemporary world, under the poet` s critical gaze, reveals the bonds and limits that are imperceptibly put on people. When crossquestioned, even the reader himself admits guilt. Who is kept on the leash?. All of us. Who holds it? It is us. What makes the leash? Culture – it means everything.”
Joanna Pałach “Nowe Książki”, 2001

Once I have heard a completely private piano concert given by Ewa Sonnenberg. I assure you she can play with as much skill as she writes poetry. Among Polish poets, she is an outstandingly interesting, distinctive personality, characterized by expressive and full phrase.”
T.L. “Magazyn literacki” 2001

The poet, like Pascal fascinated with space, loves this intangible, somnambulistic and rough trembling of the human heart. And just most shocking, excruciating and sometimes giving shivers are the poems in which Ewa Sonnenberg speaks about feelings, about the comings and goings of people dear to her. And like a definition taken from Pascal` s notes, it flickers with a deem light what she says about the heart: “ because the heart is a strange animal , ageless and outside the space”. One cannot miss reading the collection “Lekcja zachwytu”. It hurts like an arrow point. Her poems hit the brain and stay in the memory”
Hieronim Szczur, “Arte” 2006

“Lekcja zachwytu” is an oneiric book of poetry, a little Buddhist , a bit Franciscan, which becomes a picture of life in which you find questions about the miraculous, questions to which the poet does not expect any answers.
Igor Stokfiszewski, Instytut Ksiązki, 2006

“Ewa Sonnenberg` s writings bring back to life the poetic passion worth of involvement and the sensitivity that is shocking in its uncovering power. Like Sappho` s, these poems undoubtedly invite to sympathy, to empathy. This is the literature, truly, as recommended by Nietzsche, written with blood.”
Jarosław Klejnocki “Gazeta Wyborcza”

“There is no doubt that Sonnenberg` s poems are immediately recognized among the great mass of texts circulating on the poetic market. Their density, unbelievable intensity and certain polyphonia. Sonnenberg probably assumed she would not be making use of the effects related to the traditional division of the sexes.”
Karol Maliszewski “Zwierzę na J” (Szkice o wierszach i ludziach), 2001

Rebellion and humbleness – these paradoxical extremes are absolutely necessary! Rebellion is the inspiration, humbleness- a teacher of the text . Auden wrote that “ the cold had made a poet “, so in some sense, also the alienation and rejection, something “outside” where one can find something that perhaps is impossible to put into words – except poetry,.
The interview with Katarzyna Zdanowicz “Opcje” 2006

„Ewa Sonnenberg is a pure-bred poet and a strong artistic personality. Despite the large number of those who write, there are not many like her. It was my pleasure to be with Ewa Sonnenberg in the Creative Writing class and I learned a lot from her. Writing for her is priesthood, and it is not always that you can look into the priestess` eyes Not everybody is brave enough to live on the verge of the Word – like her.”
A student of Creative Writing, Krakow 2008

IS THERE AN EXIT FROM HERE?
NO, THIS IS A LANDSCAPE
Ewa Sonnenberg, “Zerwana nić Ariadny”