For over twenty years, Zuzanna Ginczanka’s poetry has occupied an important, albeit somewhat special place in the history of Polish literature of the final years of the 2nd Republic, which were overshadowed by the premonition of impending catastrophe and the following dramatic persecutions brought by the German occupation. It was the sign of its times - it agreed with the conventions of the bygone era, its ways and artistic work. And at the same time - it was a voice of the approaching revolution: the voice of a woman aware of her own power and liberated word, her own body and inevitable death. But both: Ginczanka and her poetry are also legends of the milieus and worlds that have long ceased to exist: of the pre-war small town life, the last bohemians of Warsaw, and finally – of the victims of the inhuman crime of Holocaust. They prove how much we are determined by the times we are used to call “our own”, the place that seems to us the chosen one, and the Great History that feeds on our success, misfortune, triumphs and falls.
From the Preface by Izolda Kiec.