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Julia Hartwig - Poetry Readings: 'Victoria' (66/100)

159 views · Published 18 October 2017 · 1:45 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Entertainment

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Julia Hartwig (1921-2017) was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and author of children's books. She studied at universities in Warsaw, Lublin and Kraków. Czesław Miłosz called her 'the grande dame of Polish poetry'. [Listener: Andrzej Wolski; date recorded: 2010]

TRANSCRIPT: I'll read the poem 'Victoria' now, which recalls the period following the end of the war in Poland.

 

Why didn't I dance on the Champs-Elysees

when the crowd cheered the end of the war?

Why didn't I throw myself into the arms of a sailor

who walked down the gangway with a duffel on his arm

and ran towards me through the excited crowd

raging sounds of be-bop

the Marseillaise and God Save the Queen

[blaring from all the loudspeakers?]

 

Why didn't I break out a bottle of champagne

next to the two of them still dressed in English uniforms

not guessing one day I would stand at the end of their road?

 

Why was I fated to be on the main street of Lublin

watching regiments with red stars enter the city

crying with joy I would no longer hear the hated Raus! and Halt!

but torn by sadness this was the price for a lost dream

of a hero's triumphant entry on a white horse

for the return of those who twice cheated

didn't want to come back

 

So we stood – the ones who survived –

on the streets of Warsaw transformed into a desert

and today years later find ourselves

in the fading films of old newsreels

hard to recognise

 

Taken from 'In Praise of the Unfinished: Selected Poems' (2008) translated, from the Polish, by John and Bogdana Carpenter.

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