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A new Polish-English dual-language translation from the Operating System's Glossarium: Unsilenced Texts series.
"An astounding book about dreaming and about dreams-dreams of God, dreams of falling, dreams of Russia and of China; dreams of death. Everything is in here: fish mandalas in the sky; Cathars on clifftops; angels on the streets of Warsaw; Castaneda and Gurdjieff and the I Ching; chakras and human sacrifices; popes and Nazis and President Bill Clinton. Reading it is pure delight-you never know what extraordinary image, mind-bending concept, or stunning
juxtaposition will come next. All is held together by a controlled and compelling narratorial voice brilliantly rendered into English by translator Victoria Miluch, who has perfectly captured Zelwan's heady mix of memory, spirituality, philosophy, and sheer psychic energy. A marvel!" - Bill Johnston, award winning translator of 'Pan Tadeusz.'
Dreaming (¿nienie) is a collection of lyric fragments that revolve around dreams and the way they reflect, refract, and seep into the waking world. Read individually, the fragments are measured and contemplative, imagistic and surreal, and peppered with humor of the absurd. Taken together, we start to notice obsessions and threads that serve as lodestars guiding us through the chaotic unconscious. Figures and events return, but what's most recognizable about them is their tendency toward transformation and flux. Aphorism-like truths are posited, then questioned. An idea comes to light, then blends into a fabric of images, literatures, religions, histories, and the quotidian everyday, and becomes something else altogether.
About the author
Marta Zelwan is a Polish writer based in Warsaw. She has published nine books, including collections of poetry, prose, and essays. Two of her books have been nominated for the Nike Award, Poland's most prestigious literary award, and she has won the Iskry Press Prize, the Literature Foundation Prize, the Stanis¿aw Pi¿tak Prize, and the Edward Stachura Prize, as well as the Culture Foundation Prize.
