An original poetic testimony of the martial law in Poland is provided by Jerzy Ficowski's two cycles from 1981/1982, entitled 'Przepowiednie' and 'Pojutrznia', edited in 1983 in the form of an 'off-censorship' volume. This sketch describes certain features of the Ficowski collection causing that a historical account has not enslaved the most valuable elements of Ficowski's mature poetry - on the contrary, an ambiguity-related value has been added to it. The language, as it were, 'stages' social processes of shifting meanings; personifications create a theatre of imagination out of abstract notions; time is subject to animation, turning historical analogies with the age of insurrections into completely physical processes; lastly, these poems' lyrical subject moves between the role of a witness to the events and the one of a carrier of magical worlds. This makes the poetry a play of meanings and a domain of imagination, whilst remaining a testimony; it saves its autonomy against History.
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