Another Beauty

One of Poland's most important poets, Adam Zagajewski came of age in the Communist Cracow of the 1960s and '70s. In the Beauty of the Other explores this critical period in his life when he was a student of philosophy and psychology and earned his keep lecturing to tired factory workers and Party hacks. It was in Cracow that Zagajewski began writing poetry and joined the Ledgling Polish opposition movement. He offers rare insight into the atmosphere -- both gloomy and prankish -- of the increasingly toothless, faltering Communism, as he presents a mock-heroic epic of dissident tribunes, police informers, naive idealists, and clandestine publishers.

But In the Beauty of the Other is also the story of Zagajewski's life as an artist, of his double liberation: first from the official lies and imposed collectivism of the regime and later from the imposed intellectual collectivism of the opposition. This luminous memoir offers a fascinating counterpoint to Zagajewski's poetry.