Kosciuszko Foundation: Polish Literature Talk Series

The Ghost of Shakespeare
Decades of Reading, Decades of Writing
A conversation: Ross Ufberg - Anna Frajlich

From the Kosciuszko Foundation website: This volume collects the critical prose of award-winning writer Anna Frajlich. The Ghost of Shakespeare takes its name from Frajlich's essay on Nobel Prize laureate Wisława Szymborska, but informs her approach as a comparativist more generally as she considers the work of major Polish writers of the twentieth century, including Zbigniew Herbert, Czesław Miłosz, and Bruno Schulz. Frajlich's study of the Roman theme in Russian Symbolism owes its origins to her stay in the Eternal City, the second stop on her exile from Poland in 1969. The book concludes with autobiographical essays that describe her parents' dramatic flight from Poland at the outbreak of the war, her own exile from Poland in 1969, settling in New York City, and building her career as a scholar and leading poet of her generation.

Anna Frajlich – a poet, educator and scholar. She is an author of 17 books, and her poetry, reviews, articles and essays have been published in various journals in Poland, the United States, and Europe. Anna Frajlich is a Sr. Lecturer Emerita at the Department of Slavic Languages and Associate Faculty Member, Harriman Institute at Columbia University in New York City, where she has taught Polish language and literature for over three decades. She received her MA from Warsaw University in the Polish literature, and defended her Ph.D. dissertation in the Slavic Department of the New York University in 1990. In 2002 Anna Frajlich received The Knight Cross of the Order of Merit awarded by the President of the Polish Republic, in 2008 she received the honorary title of the Ambassador of Szczecin, Poland, in 2017 the Distinguished Pole Award in USA in the category of culture, and in 2020 the Susanne Lotarski Distinguished Achievement Award for her many contributions to Polish culture in poetry, prose and literary studies extending over several decades.

Ross Ufberg eceived a Master of Philosophy and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University, where he studied Russian and Polish literature, the latter under the mentorship of Anna Frajlich. Ufberg has translated dozens of Anna Frajlich's poems, which have been published in a variety of places, including World Poetry; he has also translated various books from Polish and Russian, such as Marek Hlasko's autobiography--also under Anna Frajlich's steady, guiding hand. Ufberg is cofounder of New Vessel Press, a publishing house specializing in literature in translation.

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