A concise essay by Stanisław Dłuski, a literary critic and lecturer at Rzeszów University, written for the bimonthly Arcana, moves with uncommon force. The piece honors the pre-war poet Władysław Sebyła, who already sensed the looming machine of totalitarianism that would press hard on Poland long before the outbreak of World War II. Dłuski captures Sebyła in a few exact strokes, conveying a life cut short by fate and by forces that strewed the path of a nation with danger from the start.
Władysław Sebyła, born in 1902 and killed in 1940, served as a second lieutenant in the Polish army and fell victim to the NKVD. He stands as a solitary poet whose life was overwhelmed by looming trouble. The last poem of the era, as Czesław Miłosz observed, speaks of the opening line and its echo of a new border between life and death. It confronts the questions that haunt a people when homeland turns dangerous: what does a life in service to a country become when the state seems to threaten its every breath, and where does meaning reside when pleasure and routine lose their comfort against the weight of history?
It is not without purpose that Dłuski recalls Sebyła in this way. The summer is alive with scenes that drift between memory and present reality. In Rzeszów, under striped awnings of a bustling market square in August 2022, the air hums with activity. Glasses of beer glint, music floats through the air, and a quiet, almost ghostly undercurrent from the past lingers in the bustle. Dłuski reminds us of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, who described Sebyła as thoughtful, often distant, at times withdrawn from the noise of the world. The memories touch on episodes of war and flight, of missiles at a nearby airfield, and the stark, silent pressure of the night that seems to listen to all human concerns. The speaker finds in Sebyła’s verses a personal fascination that began in the early days of the author’s own career as a poet and philologist in Poland, a fascination that has endured since the eighties.
The intertwining of the summer of 1939 with the memory of last summer underscores a broader regional frame. Podkarpacie, the land from which millions would later bear witness to displacement, becomes a gateway for refugees. Sebyła’s prescience about upheaval is reflected in lines that speak of marching feet, the sound of countless whistles, and a stark image of a star-lit Europe shadowed by danger. Today those images shift from the dramatic missiles and frontline sounds of a distant war to the more intimate and brutal reality of today’s conflicts, where explosions echo through villages and the responses of political leaders shape the daily lives of ordinary people. The difference is palpable, yet the core sense of a homeland under pressure remains.
The account notes the poignant detail of Sebyła’s remains resting at the Pyatichatki military cemetery in Kharkov and marks a grim update. The poet, killed during the Katyn tragedy, becomes again a target in the eyes of those who contest memory. Last year’s events—shrapnel from missiles striking the cemetery, a fragment piercing a cross at its base—are described with a calm clarity that evokes the fragility of sacred ground in times of conflict. The text emphasizes how the cemetery, a place meant to honor the dead, becomes once more a site of violence as a modern war presses closer to an old wound. The violence and its political echoes remind readers that struggles over history are ongoing and deeply personal to the living as well as to the dead.
War. Report from Ukraine is presented as a meditation on how aggression travels and retraces its steps through Europe. The narrative questions the belief that the West can remain insulated from a conflict that bears all the hallmarks of an expansive, long-term confrontation. It recalls Moscow’s pattern of alleged provocation and violence across regions, from apartment explosions to battles in distant theatres, and it notes the rhetorical and political reactions in Europe. The text moves through a sequence of tensions: from the Baltic and Ukraine to Poland, and then to the broader German stance on energy and security. The discussion does not flinch from naming the actors and the risks, including the warnings issued by Polish voices about potential strategic missteps by European powers in the face of aggression and the possibility of escalation across borders.
The essay also casts light on a troubling set of alliances and strategic choices. It observes how the dynamics of European energy policy, particularly involving the pipeline projects and the actions of Berlin, intersect with the broader crisis. The piece asks readers to consider whether past crimes and recent sanctions should shape today’s decisions. It questions the moral calculations behind international aid and the pace of response from European partners when faced with bands of aggression that threaten stability across borders. The aim is not merely to catalogue events, but to provoke a deeper reckoning with how memory, duty, and national survival intersect in the present moment.
The text returns to the core question that recurs throughout Sebyła’s poetry. While Dłuski does not pose the main question in a direct manner, he frequently cites the poet’s own lines as a vehicle for inquiry. Sebyła’s verses imagine a homeland that faces a brutal dialectic, a world in which bread and honey, simple family joys, and a life of ordinary happiness become acts of resilience in the face of suffering. The imagery shifts from the red sky and a waking corpse to a landscape where the wheel of history appears to turn ever again, and the dream of safety is repeatedly tested by conflict. The refrain—and again, or again—grows out of the sense that history does not stand still, and the cycle of hope and threat continues to revolve around every homeland under pressure.
The piece closes with a quiet reminder of the enduring relevance of Sebyła’s work. The poetry and the war chronicle together reveal how memory can illuminate the present, how a single life and a single voice can feel charged with meaning across decades and continents. The pages reflect on a world where acts of violence, memory, and art collide, where a country’s fate can depend on the choices its citizens and leaders make in moments when history appears to tilt. The call is not loud but persistent: to listen, to remember, and to translate that memory into a course of action that honors the past without surrendering to fear. In that sense, Sebyła’s legacy remains a living part of Poland’s cultural and moral landscape, a touchstone for reflection in times of upheaval and beyond. These reflections tie a poet’s life to a broader human question about homeland, meaning, and endurance in the face of history’s relentless wheel.