The poetic formation known as the “New Wave” or “Generation 68,” which dominated the Polish poetic landscape in the late 1960s and 1970s, emerged in response to specific sociopolitical conditions, and in protest against the Polish literary scene that, in their view, neglected its public obligations. They called for a literature that acknowledges “what is today the source of despair, enchantment, hatred, fear, love and faith,” expressed in a language “that lives in our brains and in our refrigerators, in which we make friends and establish relations, which distorts our judgments and helps us to lie.” They were looking for a literary idiom to confront and denounce the conditions under the communist regime. Jaroslaw Anders will talk about the groups origins, discuss their literary concepts, and recall the political and ethical atmosphere they helped to shape.
Jaroslaw Anders is a freelance writer, translator, and editor. He is the author of Between Fire and Sleep: Essays on Modern Polish Poetry and Prose (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) and numerous articles in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, and other publications. He has translated several books from English into Polish and from Polish into English. In the past, he served as writer and broadcaster for the Voice of America and worked in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the U.S. Department of State. He lives in Washington, D.C.