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Literature & Democracy

Tomas Venclova

February 1, 2023

GULAG prisoner’s uniform and belongings, Sakharov Center, Moscow. Photo by Ellen Hinsey.
The Sakharov Center has been accused of violating Russia’s Foreign Agent Laws.

“A principled stance against aggression should never turn into blind hatred. Such hatred does not help anyone to win, since victory for us means increasing—and not diminishing—our humanity.”

Acclaimed Lithuanian poet, writer, and critic Tomas Venclova has dedicated his life to combating authoritarianism, and to the world of letters. We are honored to publish in English two of his recent poems: “To Master Radovan” and “Extra Urbem,” both translated from the Lithuanian, and an interview between Tomas and NER international correspondent Ellen Hinsey.

To Master Radovan
Extra Urbem
Interview: Increasing Our Humanity: Poetry, Civil Society, and Democratic Ethics


This is the third in our “Literature and Democracy” series. This quarterly column, curated by NER international correspondent Ellen Hinsey, presents writers’ responses to the threats to democracy around the world, beginning with a focus on Eastern Europe.

Filed Under: Featured, Literature and Democracy, News & Notes Tagged With: Ellen Hinsey, Tomas Venclova

Ellen Hinsey

A State of Fog: Making Sense of the Polish (Non)Election

June 16, 2020

Ellen Hinsey reports on recent developments in Poland during lockdown, where the May 10 presidential election was not officially canceled, nor was it held.

OVER THE LAST TEN YEARS we have seen the progressive rise of authoritarianism in Europe and now also in the United States. Restrictions on the media, limits on freedom of assembly, and the dismantling of the separation of powers have taken different forms in different countries. In Central Europe, over the last two months, countries have used COVID-19 lockdown conditions to pass emergency laws or introduce further repressive measures. In Poland, the governing Law and Justice party attempted to push through legislation that would have resulted in a presidential election that was neither free nor fair. The story suggests a cautionary tale for us all.

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In Europe, the uncertainty brought about by the pandemic comes on the heels of a twelve-year period in which—after the 2008 financial crisis, the 2015 refugee crisis, and the recent rise of anti-democratic sentiment—social and political assurances have steadily been eroded. We are aware that we are facing not only a pandemic of exceptional proportions, but that something even more disruptive, even more dangerous, may await us. We are confronted with the most pressing questions: do we have the resources to maintain our civic decency, address our errors, in short, to save ourselves?

Among the critical tools we possess to counter this moment of pandemic uncertainty—in addition to farsighted medical recommendations and scrupulous crisis management—is that of legal certainty. The last two months in Poland, as the ruling Law and Justice party prepared for a presidential election, have shown us how the basis of a country’s rule of law and legal certainty—as it pertains to the fundamental democratic freedom of free and fair elections—can be dismantled.

Poland’s State of Fog
A review of the facts: like many nations, in the face of the gravity of the COVID-19 epidemic, the Polish government sought to introduce emergency regulations to address the crisis. The Polish Constitution allows for a response to such an emergency situation under its “extraordinary measures,” including a “State of Natural Disaster,” fundamentally suited for the COVID-19 epidemic. However, anxious to carry through with the country’s May presidential elections, the Law and Justice government held off, as enacting this extraordinary measure would have legally triggered the postponement of all elections until the crisis’s end. Moreover, with the incumbent Law and Justice President Andrzej Duda leading in the polls—national confinement having provided him with unequaled campaign visibility—such a step was not deemed advantageous. Instead, on March 13 the Polish Government introduced by decree a “State of Epidemic Emergency” (later changed to “State of Epidemic”). Legal scholars sharply questioned the proportionality of the restrictions introduced under the State of Epidemic (not among the constitution’s extraordinary measures), as well as its indefinite duration, but we leave that debate for another time.

Two weeks later, in early April, a sequence of events began to unfold that would gravely undermine Poland’s legal certainty regarding free and fair elections. Although voices, including the Polish Association of Epidemiologists and four hundred legal experts, increasingly called for the election’s postponement—and despite the fact that the country’s Constitutional Tribunal holds that no electoral law should be modified less than six months prior to an election—on April 6 Law and Justice introduced a special election draft act and pushed it though the Sejm in a single day. Defying growing opposition, the draft act proposed, with now only a month remaining before the presidential election, to organize national postal voting for 30 million citizens, a task never before attempted in Poland. It also included a highly disputed restructuring of the electoral process itself, in particular by transferring the organization of the elections from the country’s independent National Election Commission to the Ministry of State Assets, run by Jacek Sasin, a Law and Justice appointee.

Due to the controversial nature of the proposed changes under pandemic conditions, critics of the legislation contended that if the elections were to go forward, they would effectively be conducted without a genuine competitive campaign, with inadequate assurances for the ballots’ delivery and inviolability, and without requisite provisions for overseas voting. These doubts, and numerous others, were expressed not only by the country’s political opposition, but also by certain key politicians aligned with the leading party, and disagreement over the bill subsequently created a split between the majority Law and Justice party and its coalition partner Agreement, led by Jarosław Gowin, who resigned in protest.

Future legal scholars may well single out May 6, 2020, as a particularly dark day for Poland’s constitutional history. On that day, with chaotic and incomplete postal voting preparations, and only four days to go, party leaders Jarosław Kaczyński and Jarosław Gowin, newly reconciled, issued a joint statement announcing that the presidential election—though constitutionally required to be held on May 10—would not be officially canceled, but neither would it be held (stay with me here), with the understanding that the Polish Supreme Court, which oversees the legitimacy of elections, would consider such a (nonexistent) election invalid, and having invalidated it, empower the Marshall of the Sejm to set a new date.

Here it seems, having left behind legal certainty, one reaches the abyss of the legally absurd.

To further complicate matters, even if it wished to do so, the Polish Supreme Court is only empowered to issue such a verdict on the basis of an election report by the National Election Commission. On election night, the National Election Commission would announce that since there had been no election, there had been no candidates, and no such report would be forthcoming.

Thus, on Sunday, May 10, 2020, the Polish nation awoke mystified, to no ballots, no election, and to candidates who had vanished. In short, fog and uncertainty reigned.

Subsequently (based on the National Election Commission’s legal fiction of nonexistent candidates, a contested fact) it was announced that the Marshall of the Sejm, as if ex nihilo, would set a new election date. After two months of contentious struggle, the opposition parties accepted this proposal.

At this writing, it appears that the Poles will have hybrid postal and in-person elections at the end of June. With the cost, however, of a clear disregard for fundamental principles of rule of law.

Life after COVID-19: Dancing on the Precipice
What can we learn from this cautionary tale? As we remember, a number of other high-stakes presidential elections are approaching—notably in the United States—where human safety and democratic legal certainty are being weighed in the balance of political ambition. The implications of basing one’s reelection on the compromised safety and lives of those one is mandated to serve deserves no comment. In this time of global upheaval, however, what we can know is that either we fight to uphold the integrity of our legal systems—with the hope they will be there for us after the COVID-19 crisis—or we can squander them now. To make such a dangerous trade-off now with our rule of law and legal certainty, to be sure, is at our greatest peril.


This special dispatch is a follow-up to Hinsey’s earlier pieces on Poland, which are available here.

Ellen Hinsey is NER‘s international correspondent. She has lived in Paris since 1987, and witnessed firsthand the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. She has extensively reported on the rise of authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe. Her work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Irish Times, Die Welt and Poetry. Her most recent books are Mastering the Past: Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and the Rise of Illiberalism and The Illegal Age, a poetic investigation into the twentieth-century’s legacy of totalitarianism and the rise of political illegality.

Filed Under: Editors' Notebooks, NER Digital, News & Notes Tagged With: Ellen Hinsey, Polish Constitutional Crisis

Books by NER authors

October 2019

October 7, 2019

The Professor of Immortality is a tragicomedy about the paradoxes of trying to be a decent human, and—maybe even trickier—of trying to be a decent mom. It’s also page by page a joy to read. Eileen Pollack is one of the smartest, funniest and most companionable novelists out there. —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances

From the publisher: Professor Maxine Sayers once found her personal and professional life so fulfilling that she founded the Institute of Future Studies, a program dedicated to studying the effects of technology on our culture and finding ways to prolong human life. In the aftermath of her beloved husband’s death, Maxine is jolted from her grief by her sudden suspicion that a favorite former student might be a terrorist called the Technobomber and that her son might either be involved in or become a victim of this extremist’s bombing. Deserting her teaching responsibilities, her ailing mother, and an appealing suitor, Maxine feels compelled to set out and search for her son in order to warn and protect him.

Eileen Pollack is the author of the novels The Bible of Dirty Jokes, A Perfect Life, Breaking and Entering, and Paradise, New York; the short-story collections In the Mouth and The Rabbi in the Attic; and the nonfiction books The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club and Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon and Sitting Bull. Pollack has published many times in NER, and her most recent contribution, “Ranch House,” can be found in NER 32.4.

The Professor of Immortality can be purchased through HarperCollins Publishers or from your local bookstore.


A searing volume by a poet whose work conveys “the visceral effect that prison has on identity —Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

From the publisher: Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration in fierce, dazzling poems—canvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace—and, in doing so, creates a travelogue for an imagined life. Reginald Dwayne Betts confronts the funk of postincarceration existence and examines prison not as a static space, but as a force that enacts pressure throughout a person’s life.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a husband and father of two sons. The author of the memoir A Question of Freedom (Avery/Penguin 2009) and the poetry collection Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books, 2010), Betts has been awarded fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, the Open Society Institute, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Warren Wilson College. As a poet, essayist and national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice, Betts writes and lectures about the impact of mass incarceration on American society. Betts has been published in NER 31.4, 34.1, and 35.3.

Felon can be purchased directly from the publisher or from your local, independent bookstore.


Impressive in its precise articulation and range of insights, [Timothy] Donnelly’s dazzling third collection extends the thematic reach of his 2010 Kingsley Tufts Award–winning The Cloud Corporation. Charting the underbelly of Western capitalism, the speakers in Donnelly’s poems locate the imperialist impulse in humanity’s distant origins. From gut flora to galaxies, these poems offer glimpses “that waver like air above lit candles,” restoring meaning to the world in the process. —Publishers Weekly

From the publisher: In astonishingly textured poems powerful and adroit in their negotiation of a seeming totality of human experience, Donnelly confronts—from a contemporary vantage point—the clutter (and devastation) that civilization has left us with, enlisting agents as far flung as Prometheus, Flaming Hot Cheetos, Jonah, NyQuil, and, especially, Alexander the Great. 

Timothy Donnelly is the author of Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit (Grove, 2003) and The Cloud Corporation (Wave, 2010), winner of the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize. A Guggenheim Fellow, he teaches in the Writing Program of Columbia University’s School of the Arts and lives in Brooklyn with his family. His work appears in NER 40.1.

The Problem of the Many can be bought from Wave Books or from your local bookstore.


From the publisher: Through vivid imagery that celebrates the world, Boruch meditates on memory and time, and the process of living with, and working through, grief. Boruch’s poems challenge typical associations with the subject, exposing new facets of a universal feeling.

Marianne Boruch has been awarded fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. She teaches in the MFA program at Purdue University and often in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Boruch has published frequently in NER, most recently with the essay “In the Archives of the Humanly Possible: Two Rooms” in NER 37.1.

The Anti-Grief can be purchased through Copper Canyon Press or from an independent bookstore.


In the annals of publishing there is surely no comparable record of hospitality to poets, young or old. —The New York Times

From the publisher: In celebration of the prize’s centennial, this collection presents three selections from each Younger Poets volume. It serves as both a testament to the enduring power and significance of poetic expression and an exploration of the ways poetry has evolved over the past century. In addition to judiciously assembling this wide-ranging anthology, Carl Phillips provides an introduction to the history and impact of the Yale Younger Poets prize and its winners in the wider context of American poetry, including the evolving roles of race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Carl Phillips is professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis and has served as judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets since 2010. His own books of poetry include Wild Is the Wind and Pale Colors in a Tall Field. He is a frequent contributor to NER, and his work appears most recently in NER 37.1.

Firsts: 100 Years of Yale Younger Poets includes works by NER authors such as Maura Stanton, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Nicholas Samaras, Richard Siken, Valerie Wohlfeld, Ellen Hinsey, Fady Joudah, Eduardo C. Corral, Noah Warren, and others. This anthology can be purchased from the publisher.

Filed Under: NER Authors' Books, News & Notes Tagged With: Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Eduardo C. Corral, Eileen Pollack, Ellen Hinsey, Fady Joudah, Marianne Boruch, Maura Stanton, Nicholas Samaras, Noah Warren, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Richard Siken, Timothy Donnelly, Valerie Wohlfeld

Ellen Hinsey

Polish Poetry in Translation: Bridging the Frontiers of Language

July 12, 2019

Torn Posters III Rue Ordener Paris, by Roger Camp

Translation is a mysterious, imperfect art. Its impetus often arises out of unforeseen circumstances: impromptu voyages, a book’s accidental discovery, or the punishments and revelations of exile. These chance factors mean that, despite the increasing so-called globalization of the world, one can never definitively be sure that a text, no matter how important it is for one culture, will make its journey across the frontier of silence to another language.

[Read more]

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Filed Under: News & Notes Tagged With: Ellen Hinsey, Nonfiction

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Tomas Venclova

Literature & Democracy

Tomas Venclova

“A principled stance against aggression should never turn into blind hatred. Such hatred does not help anyone to win . . .”

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