In April 1965, Miron Białoszewski buys a tape recorder. He intends to record “A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising” he is currently writing, and “test himself” by performing and registering his poems on tape. Since then, in the flat at Dąbrowskiego the reels often spin, while Białoszewski reads, dictates, recites and sings to the microphone. Apart from “A Memoir...” which is entirely dictated into the tape recorder and then typed down “by ear”, in the next 2 years, he registers works of Mickiewicz, Słowacki and Norwid, fragments of the Gospel of Matthew, “Stabat Mater” and “Dies irae” hymns in his own translation, poems from the collections “The Revolution of Things” and “Było i było”, vespers sang together with Leszek Soliński and private conversations with friends.

Białoszewski treats the tape recorder as both a work tool and a toy, a gadget used for entertainment, whereas recording itself becomes a substitute for ever regretted performances of the home theatre he's been planning to revive since the closure of Teatr Osobny in 1963. In the course of time these plans appear decreasingly feasible, his works on “A Memoir...” are almost finished and Białoszewski ceases writing poems in favour of his dedication to prose. His enthusiasm about tape recording diminishes and finally, he quits the activity for quite a few years.

In the mid 1970s, his interest in it is aroused again due to the poet's acquaintance with Jadwiga Stańczakowa. In order to secure his blind friend free access to his works, Białoszewski decides to record them on tapes on a regular basis. This time recording sessions take place in Jadwiga's flat by her portable tape recorder Grundig MK 232. For the next few years, right after writing a new poem or a fragment of prose, Białoszewski – sometimes in the middle of the night – arrives at Hoża and, as Stańczakowa recalls, “in rupture and exhilaration – he records it all”. This is how this intriguing practice is established: the author's first reading of the text aloud and its recording on tape complete and finalize the process of writing. By 1982, the majority of the poet's late output is registered on tapes: hundreds of short poems, “Chamowo”, “Zawał”, fragments of “Rozkurz” and “Tajny dziennik” as well as “A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising” and “Szumy, zlepy, ciągi”. Many of his works are recorded by Białoszewski in the professional studio of the Polish Radio which, at Stańczakowa's instigation, he often visits from the mid 1970s.

This way, during the 17 years an unusual sound archive is created – an archive which constitutes a remarkable phenomenon in the Polish culture, both due to its volume (12 preserved tapes from the 1960s and several dozen tapes recorded in Jadwiga Stańczakowa's home altogether add to over 80 hours of materials, without even counting those maintained in the radio archives) and with regards to the nature of those recordings and their place among other Białoszewski's accomplishments. They are closely related with his characteristic vision of literature.

“I strive for the written to register the spoken. And I wish writing wouldn't eat speaking. What is found valuable in the spoken language, gets written down. What is valuable in the written language, is then spoken out loud”, he wrote in “Mówienie o pisaniu”. He called the invention of quiet reading a misunderstanding. He also declared, “I always considered poetry as something to be read aloud […] Poetry reaches its full being when it is spoken out loud.”

If, according to Białoszewski, a poem only starts to fully exist in being performed aloud, it is the recordings that give us the fullest insight into the matter of his creative output and let us truly see how these texts were intended by their author. Graphic notation is merely a score requiring a complementary voice, while proper pieces should be “fully heard”. This is confirmed by Białoszewski's own performances recorded on tapes. The author uses tempo, rhythm, the voice volume and melody with intensity to be rarely encountered in the Polish tradition of poetic readings, and thus he makes the sound one of the basic dimensions of his texts.

Despite the above, in reception of Białoszewski's output, the recordings have not occupied a position they deserve. Kept as a part of the collection of the Museum of Literature in Warsaw, they are only known to the small circle of experts and the poet's close friends. The series “Białoszewski by Ear” is the first to bring them to light and make them available to the wider audience.

 

***

As for the rhythm, the exhilaration. In the morning, I played the choirs of Palestrina. I lit a cigarette, I set fire in the ashtray, old matches started to burn, the fire went up, the choirs went up. Suddenly, the matches – prematurely – went out. The exhilaration lost its tempo.   

Miron Białoszewski, “Pędy, rytmy”

Białoszewski is a poet of the rhythm. Although the word itself doesn't appear in his texts too often, on many levels the rhythm plays there a crucial role: it is not only an obvious element of the formal organization of a given poem or a piece of prose but also one of the primary modes of experiencing the reality, which are inscribed in his works. In Białoszewski's writing, everyday life is a series of flows, courses, impulses, runs and exhilarations, each of them having its separate rhythm. Any disturbance of the rhythm brings the risk of a small disaster – falling out of the energetic track and losing the internal momentum: “I'm waiting in a pharmacy, only one man in front of me, being taken care of. Suddenly, someone comes with a receipt to collect his medicine. If the medicine is at hand, I won't fall out of the flow, I think to myself. But the pharmacist is searching for it – here – it's not here, she went to another room. Well, that's it. The fall” (“Pędy, rytmy”). “The fall” may be caused by protracting a certain activity or halting for too long but also by momentary weakening of attention. It can be also caused by a distracting stimulus from the outside – a clash with someone tuned with a different rhythm: “[...] I was running across the street and the traffic island to catch a tram, passing other people running like me. In the last moment I sort of tripped one lady behind me. I was late for the rhythm. I certainly spoiled her something.” (“Pędy, rytmy”)

For Białoszewski, “the exhilaration” is exactly the ephemeral moment of being “in the course”, within the rhythm, in the energetic momentum. The kind of trance whose maintenance is at stake in the everyday game played with the reality. For Białoszewski, the source of such an impulse which makes it possible to enter the proper rhythm is often classical music of which the poet was a great enthusiast. The record player in his flat was turned on almost without breaks, playing compositions from his huge collection of records which extended in the course of years. If he could have had a walkman, he would have probably never parted with music. Still, he could take its rhythm, its impetus with him: “I played Bach's “Credo” from the “Mass in B Minor”. I once went to Anin, I played “Credo”, I took a bus and all the further experiencing had the same tempo, only the momentum was literal” (“Chamowo”). The range of means used by Białoszewski to avoid “falling out of the flow” was wider: strong tea, amphetamine or codeine were just some of them. His entire lifestyle, including the reversed day and night cycle or spontaneous travels and wanders in the city at any possible time, could be defined as “grasping the exhilaration”, a multidimensional game of various rhythms which served to maintain him – as long as it is possible – on the wave of the internal momentum.

Białoszewski's sensitivity to everyday rhythms is reflected in the rhythmical dimension of his texts pre-encoded with a specific way of using the voice, melody and tempo. ”As long as you don't know how a poem will sound, you don't know what it will be. You can speak about something intended, but until you hear the words and sentences... The sound aspect is indispensable”, he says in one of the interviews, underlining how important it is to work on the sound of the text already in the process of writing it. For many years, Białoszewski's poetry featured varied rhythmical models: from regular, trance or litany resembling rhythms of early poems, through broken melodies of “Pieśni na krzesło i głos” and playful song-like pieces of the cycle “Kabaret Kici Koci” to unapparent and volatile rhythms of his late short poems.

The latter seem to be most interesting. They show the fullest reflection of the experience of the rhythm embedded in Białoszewski's texts. The rhythm should be understood in a wide, situational and contextual manner: it can be constituted by practically anything and it doesn't have to be linked with any straightforward regularity, uniformity and evenness; it could be a different – much less obvious and more difficult to grasp – kind of continuity which provides a given process or situation with specific coherence and quality. At times, only an act of breaking the rhythm understood this way makes it possible to notice it at all.

The album “Białoszewski by Ear – Volume IV” contains 131 poems selected from 20 tapes for their exceptional sound, rhythmical and melodic distinctiveness. Most of them are late pieces characterized by idiomatic rhythms where local regularities intertwine with the natural flow of speech, while frequently applied pauses play a not less important role than the words they separate. The poems abound in purely sonic or onomatopoeic moments, such as exclamations or emphasized syllables and single sounds exposing their tone which sometimes gains independence. All those sonic and rhythmical nuances could be perceived as equivalents of specific exhilarations inscribed in the texts together with momentary rhythms which carry them. Owing to these recordings, Białoszewski himself could be acclaimed a pioneer of the Polish sound poetry, if it were not for the fact that such genre never actually existed in Poland.

Maciej Byliniak

***

It is not until his works are heard that Białoszewski reveals his full spectrum. In print, the content is in the first place but only the possibility of re-listening to outstanding, originally performed texts – apart from the obvious emphasis put on the musical nature of his poetry – allows us to follow the virtuoso of words and the ephemeral beauty of his art. For us, improvising musicians, abstracts and essences complement each other in the process of reaching the beauty. Worked out day by day, they eventually „get out” of us intuitively. But one needs to seize that particular moment. The tape recorder in Białoszewski’s room and the microphones in our recording studio become the common denominator. It’s the easiest way to hunt for oneself.

Artur Majewski & Kuba Suchar | Wrocław, 2013