Vom Zuviel war die Rede, vom Zuwenig.*** Paul Celan w twórczości Mirosława Bałki

Of the poets of the last century, Paul Celan (1920-1970) has had perhaps the greatest influence on the visual arts. Among the artists who have been inspired by his work are the German Anselm Kiefer, the Polish American Daniel Libeskind, the Hungarian- German László Lakner, the Italian Giosetta Fioroni and Giuseppe Caccavali. Of particular importance, however, is Celan’s presence in the work of Mirosław Bałka (b. 1958), considered the greatest Polish visual artist/sculptor. In a recent interview with Friederike Günther, Bałka explicitly acknowledges a close (‘most friendly’) relationship – something his connoisseurs and admirers have always known about – with Paul Celan. The artist claims that Celan’s poetry had been known to him since the 1990s (the first translations of his poetry into Polish, by Ryszard Krynicki, were published in 1972) and from that moment on it constantly accompanied him, even when he did not mention it openly. The purpose of this article is to trace, at least partially, Celan’s diverse impact on the works of the Polish artist, beginning with direct quotation, primarily in the sound art installation Me Reading Lichtzwang (2011), to which the majority of this text is devoted. The use of black and white empty space also signals the connection between the poet and the sculptor. The presence of Celan’s “person” and work in Bałka’s work is also linked to the use of the German language, which in Bałka’s work takes on a peculiarly dual character. German not only carries within itself echoes of war and the Holocaust; it is also a fundamentally incomprehensible and alien language, par excellence “un-Polish”. Yet thanks to numerous German loan words in the language of his legacy trade (Bałka’s father and grandfather were stonemasons) German sounds familiar to Bałka. It symbolizes the ethics of dedication and hard work, not least manual labor, which is an essential element of the artist’s job.