Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski was a Polish poet, novelist, translator, and essayist who was born in 1945 in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine). He was relocated with his family to western Poland after World War II. He studied psychology and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and taught philosophy at the AGH University of Science and Technology. He made his poetic debut in 1967 with a poem published in Życie Literackie magazine. He was part of the Generation of '68 or the New Wave literary movement in Poland, which protested against the communist regime and its censorship. He signed the Letter of 59 in 1975, which resulted in his works being banned in Poland. He was one of the founders of the Scientific Training Association in 1978, which offered underground education. He emigrated to Paris in 1982, where he worked as an editor of the Polish émigré journal Zeszyty Literackie. He also lived in Berlin and the United States, where he taught at several universities, including the University of Houston and the University of Chicago. He returned to Poland in 2002 and resided in Kraków. He was a member of the Polish Writers' Association. His literary works were widely acclaimed and translated into many languages. He received numerous awards and honors, such as the Prix de la Liberté, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, and the Golden Wreath of Poetry. His themes included the night, dreams, history, time, infinity, eternity, silence, and death. He also explored the role of the poet and the intellectual in the modern world. He died of heart failure in 2021 at the age of 75.