in: Stosowność i forma. Jak opowiadać o Zagładzie?, eds. M. Głowiński, K. Chmielewska, K. Makaruk, A. Molisak, T. Żukowski, Kraków: TAiWPN Universitas, 2005, pp. 285-301, 2005
Ida Fink (1921–2011) and Hanna Krall (born 1935) represent two generations of modern Polish-Jewis... more Ida Fink (1921–2011) and Hanna Krall (born 1935) represent two generations of modern Polish-Jewish authors, different paths of life and various attitudes to writing. Nevertheless, their autobiographical fiction shares an important common feature: they alternate the first- and third-person narration in the process of creating the author’s self-portrait. These changes of perspective seem to constitute a textual representation of the complex Jewish-Polish (or Polish-Jewish) cultural and ethnic identities of the writers. In Ida Fink’s autobiographical novel The Journey (1990) extensive use of the third-person narration (interchanging with the first-person one) reflects the situation of someone hiding their identity during the Holocaust, forcing alien, non-Jewish identities on themselves as the only chance to survive. In the autobiographical novel by Hanna Krall The Subtenant (1985) the identity of the main character, who had lived through the Holocaust as a child, remains split into two conflicting personalities, thus showing far-reaching aftermath of the Shoah. Here, the alternation of the first-, third-, and occasionally also second-person narration is a textual representation of the psychical trauma as well as a metaphor of the ambivalent attitude towards Jews and the Holocaust in the post-war Polish culture.
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Archives of Emigration. Studies – Essays – Documents is the only academic journal in Poland devoted to history and culture of Polish emigration in the 19th and 20th century and the relation between Polish emigration and political emigration from other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The journal focuses also on the migration processes taking place all over the world in the 20th and 21st century and their cultural context. Archives of Emigration publishes academic articles, essays, and critically edited archival materials and documents, as well as reviews and biographical and memorial sketches.
Archives of Emigration is an interdisciplinary journal. Some of its issues were devoted to the deceased notable personages of Polish emigration, such as Jerzy Giedroyc, Stefania Kossowska, Józef Mackiewicz, Tymon Terlecki, Kazimierz Brandys and others. Periodically, the journal also publishes issues or sections dedicated to topical themes. The contributors who would like to undertake the role of guest editors of such an issue should contact the Editorial Board.
The journal was established in 1998 by the employees and fellows of the Archive of Emigration, an archival and research centre established as a part of the University Library in 1995.
Since 2000, the editorial board of Archives of Emigration has been awarding an annual prize for the best MA theses and PhD dissertations on the history of Polish emigration in 20th century. The prize is awarded internationally.
The journal is published by the Faculty of Humanities, Nicolaus Copernicus University and Nicolaus University Press as part of the series entitled Archives of Emigration. Studies and materials on the history of Polish emigration after 1939 edited by Stefania Kossowska (up to 2003) and Mirosław A. Supruniuk.
Edited by
MARCIN WOŁK Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń
ORCID: 0000-0002-5103-7730
Interpretive notes by
EWA OWCZARZ Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń
The article contains a presentation and an edition of a 19th c. autobiographical piece in a dialogue form entitled Przyczyny melancholii. (Rozmowa) (Reasons of Melancholy: A Conversation) by Barbara Iłłakowicz (1856–1893). The piece, found in a private archive, is crucial not only as a document of its time and as a source that enriches the state of art about family relations of the poetess Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna, the author’s daughter. It is first and foremost an interesting herstory document of the 19thc. Poland and Lithuania: a testimony of personal and professional dilemmas of a woman of noble--yeoman origin and earning her living by her own work. Regardless of emotional and partially financial dependency on a male, Barbara Iłłakowicz does not resign from subjective autonomy and agency. The text openly touches such issues as, e.g., abortion and a woman’s right to decide about herself.
Agnieszka Gajewska. Zagłada i gwiazdy: przeszłość w prozie Stanisława Lema [The Holocaust and the Stars: The Past in Stanisław Lem’s Fiction]. Poznań: Adam Mickiewicz UP, 2016.
Wojciech Orliński. Lem: Życie nie z tej ziemi [Lem: Life From Another Planet]. Wołowiec: Wydawnictwo Czarne and Wydawnictwo Agora, 2017.
par excellence. It is particularly visible in the interpretations of his own origin. He often makes such self-interpretations, each time giving his lineage a generalised dimension and presenting it not only as a family or ethnic genealogy but also as a cultural origin. He almost always addresses his origins in geographical or topographical categories. Sandauer emphasises that his birthplace, Sambor, was a spatial, historical, cultural and linguistic borderland, showing its distance from cultural and political centres. At the same time he recalls other writers of Jewish origin: Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Max Brod, and implies that ideas and works of fundamental importance to
contemporary European culture were born in such peripheral spaces. Sandauer uses spatial terms to speak also about the history of his family and the assimilation of the Jews, shown as a gradual relocation from the Jewish to the Polish quarter. A separate place in Sandauer’s mind is occupied by Israel as a space of Jewish salvation on the one hand, and of covering up the traces of the Central European Jewish identity on the other (the hebraisation of surnames and the gradual disappearance of Yiddish). The writer places himself in between these spaces as a “man of the borderland.”
KAZIMIERZ BRANDYS ET LA VÉRITÉ INDIVIDUELLE
L’article propose un regard synthétique sur l’œuvre de Kazimierz Brandys, il la relit d’après une perspective personnelle comme le combat de l’auteur avec l’expérience d’une altérité non-désirée et imposée. L’article analyse les thèmes autobiographiques et biographiques, les mentions de ses origines juives par l’écrivain (de plus en plus fréquentes à partir des années 60), les jeux auxquels ce dernier se livre avec son nom propre, les constructions fabulaires mêlant des trames polonaises et juives, le motif de la famille et de la généalogie, l’expérience répétée chez ses protagonistes de l’exclusion et du rejet, l’affection pour les formes subjectives d’expression comme le journal intime et la lettre, ainsi que le sentiment maintes fois exprimé par l’auteur de l’injustice de ses évaluations critiques. L’auteur de l’article interprète l’écriture de Brandys comme l’expression conséquente d’une révolte contre la tyrannie de circonstances imposées, matinée de la conviction que cette révolte est vaine.
The grotesque in the works of this and other Holocaust writers is a much wider issue, worthy of thorough study. The authors variously employ images of dehumanisation, ironically reproduce Nazi propaganda, mock highbrow culture, expose the contradictions intrinsic in 19th and 20th century humanitarian discourse or in language itself. The grotesque makes readers uncomfortable,
questions readymade interpretations and judgements, demands independence in taking a stance on things which are beyond understanding. That is why it becomes an efficient device of artistic
expression concerning subjects which do not easily lend themselves to more traditional and conventional approaches.
Archives of Emigration. Studies – Essays – Documents is the only academic journal in Poland devoted to history and culture of Polish emigration in the 19th and 20th century and the relation between Polish emigration and political emigration from other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The journal focuses also on the migration processes taking place all over the world in the 20th and 21st century and their cultural context. Archives of Emigration publishes academic articles, essays, and critically edited archival materials and documents, as well as reviews and biographical and memorial sketches.
Archives of Emigration is an interdisciplinary journal. Some of its issues were devoted to the deceased notable personages of Polish emigration, such as Jerzy Giedroyc, Stefania Kossowska, Józef Mackiewicz, Tymon Terlecki, Kazimierz Brandys and others. Periodically, the journal also publishes issues or sections dedicated to topical themes. The contributors who would like to undertake the role of guest editors of such an issue should contact the Editorial Board.
The journal was established in 1998 by the employees and fellows of the Archive of Emigration, an archival and research centre established as a part of the University Library in 1995.
Since 2000, the editorial board of Archives of Emigration has been awarding an annual prize for the best MA theses and PhD dissertations on the history of Polish emigration in 20th century. The prize is awarded internationally.
The journal is published by the Faculty of Humanities, Nicolaus Copernicus University and Nicolaus University Press as part of the series entitled Archives of Emigration. Studies and materials on the history of Polish emigration after 1939 edited by Stefania Kossowska (up to 2003) and Mirosław A. Supruniuk.
Edited by
MARCIN WOŁK Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń
ORCID: 0000-0002-5103-7730
Interpretive notes by
EWA OWCZARZ Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń
The article contains a presentation and an edition of a 19th c. autobiographical piece in a dialogue form entitled Przyczyny melancholii. (Rozmowa) (Reasons of Melancholy: A Conversation) by Barbara Iłłakowicz (1856–1893). The piece, found in a private archive, is crucial not only as a document of its time and as a source that enriches the state of art about family relations of the poetess Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna, the author’s daughter. It is first and foremost an interesting herstory document of the 19thc. Poland and Lithuania: a testimony of personal and professional dilemmas of a woman of noble--yeoman origin and earning her living by her own work. Regardless of emotional and partially financial dependency on a male, Barbara Iłłakowicz does not resign from subjective autonomy and agency. The text openly touches such issues as, e.g., abortion and a woman’s right to decide about herself.
Agnieszka Gajewska. Zagłada i gwiazdy: przeszłość w prozie Stanisława Lema [The Holocaust and the Stars: The Past in Stanisław Lem’s Fiction]. Poznań: Adam Mickiewicz UP, 2016.
Wojciech Orliński. Lem: Życie nie z tej ziemi [Lem: Life From Another Planet]. Wołowiec: Wydawnictwo Czarne and Wydawnictwo Agora, 2017.
par excellence. It is particularly visible in the interpretations of his own origin. He often makes such self-interpretations, each time giving his lineage a generalised dimension and presenting it not only as a family or ethnic genealogy but also as a cultural origin. He almost always addresses his origins in geographical or topographical categories. Sandauer emphasises that his birthplace, Sambor, was a spatial, historical, cultural and linguistic borderland, showing its distance from cultural and political centres. At the same time he recalls other writers of Jewish origin: Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Max Brod, and implies that ideas and works of fundamental importance to
contemporary European culture were born in such peripheral spaces. Sandauer uses spatial terms to speak also about the history of his family and the assimilation of the Jews, shown as a gradual relocation from the Jewish to the Polish quarter. A separate place in Sandauer’s mind is occupied by Israel as a space of Jewish salvation on the one hand, and of covering up the traces of the Central European Jewish identity on the other (the hebraisation of surnames and the gradual disappearance of Yiddish). The writer places himself in between these spaces as a “man of the borderland.”
KAZIMIERZ BRANDYS ET LA VÉRITÉ INDIVIDUELLE
L’article propose un regard synthétique sur l’œuvre de Kazimierz Brandys, il la relit d’après une perspective personnelle comme le combat de l’auteur avec l’expérience d’une altérité non-désirée et imposée. L’article analyse les thèmes autobiographiques et biographiques, les mentions de ses origines juives par l’écrivain (de plus en plus fréquentes à partir des années 60), les jeux auxquels ce dernier se livre avec son nom propre, les constructions fabulaires mêlant des trames polonaises et juives, le motif de la famille et de la généalogie, l’expérience répétée chez ses protagonistes de l’exclusion et du rejet, l’affection pour les formes subjectives d’expression comme le journal intime et la lettre, ainsi que le sentiment maintes fois exprimé par l’auteur de l’injustice de ses évaluations critiques. L’auteur de l’article interprète l’écriture de Brandys comme l’expression conséquente d’une révolte contre la tyrannie de circonstances imposées, matinée de la conviction que cette révolte est vaine.
The grotesque in the works of this and other Holocaust writers is a much wider issue, worthy of thorough study. The authors variously employ images of dehumanisation, ironically reproduce Nazi propaganda, mock highbrow culture, expose the contradictions intrinsic in 19th and 20th century humanitarian discourse or in language itself. The grotesque makes readers uncomfortable,
questions readymade interpretations and judgements, demands independence in taking a stance on things which are beyond understanding. That is why it becomes an efficient device of artistic
expression concerning subjects which do not easily lend themselves to more traditional and conventional approaches.
Avaialbe on-line: http://apcz.pl/czasopisma//index.php/LC/issue/view/700
Polish with English summaries
Ogólnopolskie Sympozjum Dydaktyków Komparatystyki
Program
Toruń, 30-31 marca 2016 roku
Sala im. Ludwika Kolankowskiego (s. 307)
Collegium Maius, Wydział Filologiczny, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika
ul. Fosa Staromiejska 3, 87-100 Toruń
Tekst przynosi spojrzenie na pisarstwo Brandysa nie tylko jako na twórczość artystyczną, lecz także – rozbudowaną wypowiedź osobistą. Autor nie ułatwia nam zadania, bo choć teksty autobiograficzne i autorefleksyjne zajmują w jego dorobku dużo miejsca, nigdy nie zdobył się na dokonanie na sobie wiwisekcji na miarę, powiedzmy, Gombrowicza. Z drugiej strony właśnie gra szczerością, maskowana obawa przed pełnym odsłonięciem, rozmaite formy autofikcjonalizacji mogą przykuwać uwagę współczesnego czytelnika. Całościowy ogląd twórczości Brandysa pozawala zauważyć m.in. powtarzanie się w kolejnych tekstach zespołu motywów tematycznych i problemów, których niezmienność jest szczególnie uderzająca wobec podatności pisarza na mody literackie. Na ów stały zespół tematów składa się kilka charakterystycznych elementów: fascynacja procesem przeradzania się fikcji w rzeczywistość i umykania realności w fikcję; przeciwstawienie ludzkiej prawdy pojedynczej miarom i okolicznościom pochodzącym z zewnątrz; wreszcie motywy rodziny, rodowodu i schemat biografii jako podstawowa konstrukcja fabularna.