Beautiful Poland [antikvár]

Any country - including your own native-land - can be viewed from various perspectives. An assessment performed by a geograptier or a statistics specialist would seem most common and objective. Sucti an interpretation typically depicts Poland as a country covering an area of 312 ttiousand sq. km, one of the biggest European states. A home to over 38 million citizens, of whom 24 million are city-dwellers and just over 14 million chose to settle in rural areas. A country, where for each 100 males there lives 106 females; where 10% of the citizens have graduated from universities and around 33% completed their secondary education. One might also add that Poland enjoys unrestricted access to the sea, that it borders with 7 countries, its territory is divided into 16 provinces and over 2500 communes. That the Seym, being supervised by the Senate, governs the state, and that the President acts as head of state - consequently the Republic of Poland exemplifies a parliamentary democracy. A myriad of figures and data may be quoted at this point, we could sketch maps and enclose charts. Still, it doesn't have to be that way For Poland is also a sunrise admired from the seashore; the aroma of forest after rainfall when the sun hanging low over the horizon struggles to pierce down through the branches; it is the Wawel castle gloriously towering over the curve of Vistula river; and the magnificent snow-capped Tatra Mountains observed from the peaks of Turbacz or Babia Góra. Poland is languid windings and overflows of the Biebrza river, Cracow's Franciscan basilica's dim interior lit up by stained-glass windows designed by Wyspiariski, mighty oaks and European bison of Biatowieza, narrow alleys of Kazimierz-upon-Vistula and the white waters of Dunajec fighting its way across the Pieniny Mountains. Cracow's Main Market Square and the Old Town of Warsaw; minuscule wooden Orthodox churches in Beskid Niski and the synagogues of the past surviving in the Cracow's district of Kazimierz; poetry of Zbigniew Herbert and Father Baka, music by Henryk MIkotaj Górecki and Bartus Obrochta, grand canvasses by Jan Matejko and dream-like paintings by Witkacy; Veit Stoss's altar and Our Lady of Kruzlowa, little church in D^bno and the basilica in Lichen. Multitude in diversity. For centuries Polish literature stood on the fringes of the grand literatures: the French, the German, the English and the Russian. In the Polish literary tradition it is poetry that enjoys greatest significance; prose has never achieved such level of universality, nor has any Polish novel ever joined the club of European classics. Four Poles so far have been awarded a Nobel Prize for literature - Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905), Wladystaw Reymont (1924), Czestaw Mitosz (1980) and Wislawa Szymborska (1996). Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz "Witkacy", the author of novels and plays staged world-wide, was a visionary ahead of his time. Similarly, Witold Gombrowicz was a truly original and universally appreciated writer But it is poetry that the Polish contemporary literature rests upon, with Czestaw Mitosz, Wistawa Szymborska, Zbigniew Herbert and Tadeusz Rózewicz being its brightest stars in the firmament.