Easter Vigil

Fülszöveg

Here, for the first time in book form, are the poems of Popejohn Paul II - the first non-Italian popé for 450 years. Written between 1950 and 1966 when Karol Wojtyla was a young priest and then a bishop in Cracow, the poems appeared originally in two Polish Catholic periodicals under a pen name. It was not until Cardinal Wojtyla was elected Popé in October 1978 that his authorship was diseovered. The forty-two poems in the collection embrace a variety of styles and subjects, ranging from sharply drawn profiles in the Cyrenean cycle - of a car factory worker, a woman typing eight hours a day, an actor, a girl disappointed in love - to the startiing and difficult philosophical poem 'The Quarry'; from the meditative Román sequence to the masterly and moving 'Easter Vigil 1966' written in the year Poland celebrated its thousand years as a Christian State. Reflecting the dramatic changes in the poet's life and in the world around him, the poems are an important record of the spiritual... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Here, for the first time in book form, are the poems of Popejohn Paul II - the first non-Italian popé for 450 years. Written between 1950 and 1966 when Karol Wojtyla was a young priest and then a bishop in Cracow, the poems appeared originally in two Polish Catholic periodicals under a pen name. It was not until Cardinal Wojtyla was elected Popé in October 1978 that his authorship was diseovered. The forty-two poems in the collection embrace a variety of styles and subjects, ranging from sharply drawn profiles in the Cyrenean cycle - of a car factory worker, a woman typing eight hours a day, an actor, a girl disappointed in love - to the startiing and difficult philosophical poem 'The Quarry'; from the meditative Román sequence to the masterly and moving 'Easter Vigil 1966' written in the year Poland celebrated its thousand years as a Christian State. Reflecting the dramatic changes in the poet's life and in the world around him, the poems are an important record of the spiritual growth of the head of the largest Christian church in the world. Jerzy Peterkiewicz, Professor of Polish Literature at London University and himself a poet and novelist, selected and translated the texts and has provided an informative introduction to the work of this philosopher poet. 'I believe,' he says, 'tnat the poems in this book provide a subtle key to the rich personality of Popejohn Paul II.' Vissza