American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020

Political aspects of contemporary Polish prose and political Bogdan Trocha, University of Zielona Gora,

Abstract: The subject of the article is to examine the relations between the most important political events in Poland in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and domestic fantastic prose. The author distinguishes three fundamental periods connected with the most important historical moments in contemporary Polish history. These are the events connected with regaining independence and creating a new statehood, the period when Marxists rule in Poland and the time after the democratic revolution of Solidarity. The analyzed material is related to these three periods. Further research is focused on the thematic dependence of specific and political aspects of a given period. In relation to the third (most extensive) period, novels that go beyond the canon of the most important political events of that time are also analyzed. The analyses have an indication of specific mechanisms of constructing fantasy novels that take up political motives. The second research objective is to determine the function in which political motifs are introduced into specific literary works. These are both intra text and cultural functions.

Keywords: , , , Scientific Fiction, , Alternative Reality,

Introduction The subject of this article is to trace the use of fantastic political motifs by the creators of Polish prose in their novels. It also indicates the historical and political conditions of these treatments and presents the mechanism that governs these literary treatments. As Polish fantasy prose begins to appear at a time when Poland lost its independence to , Prussia and Austria, the 20th century novels written before 1918 (the regaining of independence by Poland) should be taken as the boundary marking our interest. This preliminary assumption already indicates at least two basic horizons for the issue we are interested in. The first one is related to the complicated cultural and political situation of under the occupation by the three partitioners. It is connected both with the problem of struggle for the preservation of national and linguistic identity as well as with actions aimed at regaining independence. This is certainly a tragic period for Poland. Two lost national uprisings, thousands of people exiled to Siberia, deprived of their property and forced to emigrate, and the need for survival often associated with forms of political, economic and even social coexistence forced by the partitioners. The second horizon is marked by the literary space, enabling both the construction of utopian or dystopian worlds and the free use of technical and scientific discoveries that may lead to a change in the status quo imposed on Poles by the invaders. Both the choice of material and its description will be made in accordance with the principles of thematic criticism, which in this case seems to be the most obvious methodological choice.

1. The precursors of Polish fantasy The creators of the first known Polish fantasy novels took up both the traces set by the most eminent authors of that era, such as Jules Verne and Edgar Alan Poe. The best examples are

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 the novels of Władysław Umiński and Bogusław Adamowicz. However, the first important writer to take up political issues in his fantasy novels, Jerzy Żuławski, and author of novels highly valued in childhood by Stanisław Lem. His well-known lunar trilogy, which consists of the novels Na srebrnym globie1, Zwycięzca2, StaraZiemia3, using the of a trip to the moon, creates an image of the mechanisms of power and its influence on the individual and society. This is the first Polish fantasy in which the fantastic world becomes a laboratory. It is a place where various models of power are studied. By introducing people to the lunar environment, Żuławski tests not only the biblical figures of human history, collapse and salvation, but also points out the mechanisms leading to the degradation of societies in practical, axiological and cultural terms. This allows showing not only wishful models of community, but also the destructive influence of morally corrupt individuals. Thus, society, or rather its leaders, is plagued by the nietzschean will of power. The consequences of the ' actions indicate the mechanisms responsible for the downfall of heroes claiming to be leaders with that could save the community. The protagonists' intentions, which are not understood by the community or deliberately distorted by the , lead to collision between the individual and society. Żuławski is one of the first Polish creators of scientific fiction to point out the complicated engineering of social order and the importance of both outstanding individuals and anonymous emotions of community members. The second important writer of this period is Anthony Lange, who in his novel Miranda4 based on the similar to that of Herbert Georg Wells in his work Men Like Gods5, creates a specific social structure containing both utopian and dystopian elements. It is an occult fantasy, but in which not only the motif of the utopian island of Survivatsu appears, but above all, there is an author's polemic with the views of Tomasso Campanell and Frederick Nietzsche. Also important here are clear references to the Genesian trend in the work of one of the most outstanding Polish poets of the Romantic era – Juliusz Slowacki. It is a very erudite novel, in which both threads related to the liberation of Poland and criticism of European civilization appear. The polemical attitude to the utopian views of European philosophers as well as the skepticism and philosophical determinism characteristic of Lange present in Miranda is the reason why the novel is often treated as a precursor to much later literary works exposing the true nature of Soviet policy towards subordinate nations. This novel is the first contemporary utopian novel. The last important item is the four-volume novel Wyspa Mędrców6 by Buyno-Arctowa, which was one of the most popular fantasy novels of young readers before World War II. Political motifs become an active background for the fantastic story. However, they do not serve as a background. They are set in a very important function for prose directed to young people. The main is a young but typical representative of the Polish landed gentry, impoverished but extremely strongly connected with tradition and its own culture. It is this ethos of the Polish landed gentry that becomes the basic foundation of the hero's choices and actions. And yet, the fantastic aspect itself is not reduced to the role of an aesthetic ornament, but a test field of character and importance of cultural principles. The main thread of the

1 J. Żuławski, Na Srebrnym Globie, Lwów 1903. 2 J. Żuławski, Zwycięzca, Kraków 1910. 3 J. Żuławski, Stara Ziemia, Kraków 1911. 4 A. Lange, Miranda,Warszawa 1924. 5H.G. Wells, Men Like Gods, Cassell, McMillan Inc. 1923. 6 M. Buyno-Arctowa, Wyspa mędrców, vol. 1-4, Warszawa 1929-1930.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 is the issue of power, in this case power to rule the world. In the struggle for it take part representatives of the former partitioning countries, but also the mysterious sages trying to hide from the human attention. The plan configured in such a way allows introducing the young, aware of his own cultural identity of the hero into the world of basic questions about the nature of power, its purpose, responsibility associated with it and the power with which it can be used. In the field of these questions the main character, as a result of various events, discovers the ambivalent nature of power and the role that ethics and religion in contact with it. As can be seen, in the first period, when the focus of attention was on the restoration of independence and the model of the new state, the political aspects in the fantasy literature were most often used from a philosophical and cultural perspective. If they took up the subject of power, it was in a very broad context. Even in prose for young people, politics was rather associated with a didactic function.

2. In the circle of 2.1. Playing with social The loss of independence after 1945, as a result of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, not only introduced Poland into the field of political, economic and military domination of the Soviets, but also cut it off with an iron curtain from culture. However, it is difficult to point out among the creators of the fantasy novels of that period the apologists of the new political order of this measure and the involvement that Russian writers such as Ivan Yefremov or Alexander Beliayev presented. Pre-war fantasy novels were not published and were slowly being forgotten. Writers writing in before the outbreak of the war did not succumb to the characteristic and became niche writers. Among the few fantasy novels from that period introducing the motifs of socialist realism one can point out the Obłok Magellana7 of Stanislaw Lem, a very important novel about Contact, which, however, has didactic aspects characteristic of socialist realism and does not run away from depreciating Western culture. It was one of the characteristic treatments of socialist realism leading to the presentation of ideological enemies as persons and societies existing at a lower level of cultural and civilization development. It should be remembered, however, that already in the earlier novel Astronauci8 , describing a 1000 years distant future in which reigns on the whole Earth. This is in line with the canons of political figures of the future created by Yefremov and accepted politically by . However, by creating this novel Lem goes beyond the limitations of the poetics of socialist realism by focusing the plot on the issues of the human psyche during interstellar flights. The very fact of introducing motifs related to psychotronics into the novel was already considered a political defect, because at that time it was treated as a science from the West - politically suspect and not accepted. Writers who were part of the socialist realism fantasy trend also reached for specifically realized utopian concepts. These were connected or visions of atomic conflicts or large industrial projects aimed at colossal changes in the geographical conditions of the environment, which were to serve economic development. This can be seen both in Lem'sAstronauci and in Adam Hollanek'sKatastrofana "SłońcuAntarktydy"9. Although the undertaking of socialist realist aspects in the Polish novel was rather incidental and very often consciously marginalized, it should be remembered that the attractiveness of this trend for

7 S. Lem, Obłok Magellana, Warszawa 1959. 8 S. Lem, Astronauci, Warszawa 1951. 9 A. Hollanek, Katastrofa na „Słoocu Antarktydy”, 1984.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 few authors lasted until the beginning of the eighties with strong political and publishing support from the state. The best example of this is LucynaPenciak's 1980 novel Neuronyzbrodni10.

2.2. The sociological current - an attempt to lie to the system The sociological current in Polish fantasy is the most interesting literary phenomenon that deals with political issues. In Poland, this phenomenon has been devoted to many studies and the most important literary award granted by Fandom to polish artists has been named after Janusz A. Zajdel. Among the creators of this trend it is worth to present two most important writers - Prof. Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński, an outstanding sociologist dealing with the issues of political and social transformation and Janusz A. Zajdel. At the turn of the seventies and eighties Wnuk-Lipiński wrote a very important trilogy Apostezjon11 . The is set on an island, which in itself evokes images of utopian tradition. The community closed on the island functions according to the totalitarian model. Absolute power is exercised by the Team of Experts. The security of power is guaranteed by the secret service, an extensive network of penal camps and a closed zone completely deprived of food supplies. This power is based on violence and terror, which are supposed to lead to complete personality changes. Society is completely incapacitated. All goods are rationed. The trilogy shows three perspectives of functioning in such a system. The first one is connected with representatives of the authorities. From a Team of Experts to high security officers to common guards and command executors. The people of the power apparatus are bound to it for their own particular profits. They are put to the highest bid for impunity and political power. Senior officials for a sense of superiority over the rest of the society, while the lowest-ranking officials are those who most often went through the procedure of destroying their personality and total incapacitation in penal institutions. What makes the people of the system contribute here is, firstly, power over the rest of society, secondly, the possibility of remaining outside the rationing system, and thirdly, fear. The second perspective reveals the members of an atomized society, a power freely exercising the directives of power and focused on the apparent security of rationing goods for working people. The third and most interesting group is opportunists. There are ordinary criminals, but also rebellious representatives of the former middle class and the former subcultural groups, while the third perspective is provided by the inhabitants of the rebellious part of the island, the so-called Zone. In addition to distributing food, the authorities also organize the Games, all for those who respect their rights and renounce self-determination and freedom. It rejects the entire old, civic model of life rejected by the revolution. The search for freedom involves not only exclusion from the system of distribution of goods and hunger, but also the possibility of being sent to a camp. Restoration to a revolutionary community always involves the destruction of prisoners' personalities and the formation of a "new-revolutionary man. For the Team of Experts, individual members of their society are reduced to an objective category. Prisoning, torture, and killing have for them a pragmatic dimension without a moral aspect. Wnuk-Lipiński created an image of a revolutionary society during the time of terror, which was supposed not only to perpetuate power but also to destroy the remnants of the old world model. As a result, he showed a system that completely excluded human freedom and dignity. The result is the instability of the system, founded by the human

10 L. Penciak, Neurony zbrodni, Warszawa 1980. 11 E. Wnuk-Lipioski, Apostezjon vol. 1-3, Warszawa 1979-1989.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 factor. However, a man enslaved, reduced and forced to vegetate always remains a man. He is not always fully aware of the importance of what he has been deprived of. If he sees the possibility of regaining his dignity and freedom, he will launch a model of rebellion. A system based on total violence in the Apostezjon indicates the potential possibilities not only of enslaving the mind but also of internal emigration, sub-cultural escape and radical rebellion. Another very important sociological writer is Zajdel. In his most important novels he not only takes up the problem of the mechanism of exercising power in a totalitarian system, but also shows the processes of the birth of such power, and the most important thing is the functioning of people in such systems. Among the descriptions of the process of taking overpower leading to totalitarian systems; the most interesting is the one from the novel Cała prawda o planecie Ksi12. In a simple plot organized around the motif of cosmic colonization, the main motif of rebellion appears in the initial moment of colonization, when some cosmonauts are still hibernated. The result of the rebellion is the assumption of power by terrorists. They awaken only a few professionals who build a bunker in which all supplies from Earth are hidden. Exercising power is based not only on limiting the number of awakened colonists over whom total power can be exercised, but above all on the mechanism of building total obedience by rationing food. A new aspect that appears in Zajdel is a systemic lie to explain the situation. In this case it is information about a theft still on Earth. Such a lie not only creates an illusory enemy, against whom the necessary fight is supposed to force the whole society to consolidate, but also gives a moral alibi to the terrorists themselves, who as saviors of the community. The effect of such a revolution, in which the terrorists gain power and base it on a lie, terror and dehumanization of an individual, is to create a social system based on full anonymity and total supervision. They all wear numbers. Elite from 1 to 10, the others are getting higher and higher. They not only anonymize the members of society, but also define their place in the social hierarchy. The final effect of such action, as in the novel Zwycięzca Żuławskiego, leads to the hierarchical backwardness of the entire colonial community. In the novel Wyjście z cienia12, the mechanism of lying is already so precisely worked out that its practical effect is the complete distortion of reality. A lie no longer conceals the right intentions of the group in power, but even generates a figure of a common enemy. As a result, the entire negative opinion of the community is directed towards the only potential ally. The very mechanism of introducing a systemic lie into the public space is constructed in such a way that the relevant aggressors from the Cosmos present themselves to humanity as the only defenders against the impending threat. As a result, earthly governments are asking for help and protectorate, which in fact is nothing more than a form of deliberate colonization. The essence of the lie is that the usurpers present themselves as defenders, hiding their proper nature and identity. To remain enslaved is, in this case, to remain convinced that a lie reveals the true nature of the usurpers. One of the most important aspects of totalitarian Zajdel systems is the presentation of the creation of passive and atomized society. In the novel Cylinder van Troffa13 there appear motives of incapacitating the astronauts after returning from a long expedition. The incapacitation is shown as a punishment, but as a means of adaptation, and thus a form of help. A society for which freedom of choice is not inscribed in the human condition is based on total care of the automated system. Freedom is sacrificed in the name of comfort and

12 J. Zajdel, Wyjście z cienia, Warszawa 1983. 13J. Zajdel, Cylinder van Troffa, Warszawa 1980.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 safety. This model is radicalized in the novel Paradyzja14 , whose action takes place on the artificial satellite of Tartar, which declared independence. The society living there is under total surveillance. People suspected of opposing the authorities disappear. The essence of exercising power is once again a systemic lie, which in this case creates a social illusion of Paradyzja itself. This settlement does not exist, however, but the community still lives on Tartar. In the above mentioned novels by Zajdel, there is not only a description of the role of the systemic lie and the related process of enslaving society. A very important role is played here by an individual character aiming at discovering the truth and not agreeing to remain in seemingly safe enslavement. The fight for the truth is both a fight for one's own right to the truth and a fight against a system based on a lie. What is important is that this fight is almost always a lonely one. For this reason the protagonists of Zajdel are often compared to the great romantic heroes of of the 19th century. Lonely, heroic and unbroken. Tragic in Zajdel's novels is to show the passivity of an anonymous man co-creating an atomized society. The struggle for the truth is often met in Zajdel's novels with the hostile attitude of individual members of such a community trying to preserve at all costs that minimal amount of existential goods that a totalitarian system of power offers in exchange for passive enslavement.

2.3. In the circle of philosophical questions This group of fantastic novels, whose main is an attempt to diagnose political mechanisms including totalitarian power, should be closed with the novel of Lem Powrót z gwiazd 16. Unlike at Zajdel and Wnuk-Lipiński, Lem does not test the mechanisms of power based on systemic lie and terror. In this novel there appears a model consumer society of the future, in which there are no sick or old people. There is a widespread cult of youth connected with technologies allowing prolonging youth. There are also no forms of individual or institutional violence. It is an effect of voluntary betrification, consisting in the chemical elimination of the center of aggression in the brain. People also do not feel the need for competition or risk. Hence the lack of any extreme behavior, including sports. In times of widespread robotization, people no longer have to work. As a result, this literary vision of the New Age of Humanism "kills a human being"15 .

Lem, however, did not run away from political issues. He did not undertake the procedures characteristic of the exposing sociological current of Polish fantasy. However, he posed extremely important philosophical questions indicating the specificity of the social phenomenon of humanity. In his early novels such as Obłok Magellana, Astronauci and Człowiek z Marsa16 one can still point out the traces of the influence of socialist concepts being the result of Moscow's conscious policy towards satellite states. And yet, already in these novels, despite the socialist social universals introduced there, Lem writes rather characteristic of and 's warnings to the world. In this case, they are directed at the communist social experiment. In novels such as Maska17 and Eden18,

14 J. Zajdel, Paradyzja, Warszawa 1984. 15 Ibidem, p. 136. 16 S. Lem, Człowiek z Marsa, Kraków 1994. 17 S. Lem, Maska, Kraków 1976.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 political motifs no longer determine the main plot. They are, however, an important, often negatively evaluated horizon of meanings that the protagonists are confronted with. In Eden, this is an issue of eugenics. In Maska, these are problems concerning determinism and the essence of freedom. The most interesting, however, seems to be the novel Wizja lokalna21, which has features of a Swift's fantasy as a kind of continuation of the exploration of the issues already described in Powrót z gwiazd. Here, Lem conducted a literary analysis of the phenomenon of both technological and social development. The technical excellence of civilization has been associated with systemic enslavement aimed at protecting and making people happy. However, such a utopian model also led to the rebellion of a part of society that valued freedom more than the system's saving interference. The conclusions of this novel seem to state that there are no ideal solutions in the field of organizing societies. Thus, Lem went beyond criticizing totalitarian power models in his literary work and entered the field of philosophical considerations closer to him. While in the first stage one can point to his current division of the world into good and bad parts and his current hope for the future improvement of social structures, later novels seem to transfer political themes into the field of studies into communities of artificial creation. This is where Lem points to two essential components of politics. The first abstract-modelling one focuses on the question of how to organize society. The second raises the issues of what has to remain unchanged in order not to lose the species and cultural identity. Certainly, the philosophical questions about the nature of power present in Lem's novels determine the most abstract aspect of taking up political issues among Polish fantasy artists.

2.4. Ironic mirror of a - between escape and polemic As we can see, the issue of man's entanglement in the actions of state power becomes much more intriguing when this power manipulates axiological categories, using the aspect of necessity. Among the fantastic texts, Marcin Wolski's prose is a completely separate phenomenon, as is the author himself. He is probably the only Polish prose writer to create popular literature who, as a satirist and columnist, has achieved artistic success in two such exclusive systems of power. He was both a member of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) before 1989 and a columnist in the post-1989 Solidarity Weekly. Currently, he is associated with the right-wing political center and creates novels strongly referring to the conspiracy theory of recent Polish history. What is important, however, is that the ideas he proposed to the writers not only crown the period connected with the influence of the socialist authorities, but also bring a completely new perspective connected with the satirical aspect of Wolski's early work. In his first novels, he addresses the issue of legitimacy of power. In the Agent dołu19, which is a free literary adaptation of the millennium mythological motif, the figures of Mr. Priap, Baron Dracula and Baron Frankenstein appear. This specific collection is completed by the main character who is a descendant of the devilish family. This unusually strong fantasy is typical for authors who oppose the socialist model of power. Fantasy ruled out realism and its absence ruled out interest in censorship. A similar mechanism is present in Laboratorium nr 8. We are dealing here with images that point to subtle mechanisms of manipulating people, including people who seem to be in power. We can also see here the anthropological consequences of the influence of power, preserving the machiavellian paradigm, which usually leads to the objectification of man, with all the consequences, that is, ignoring his right to truth, freedom and self-determination, and above

18 S. Lem, Eden, Warszawa 1959. 19 M. Wolski, Agent Dołu, Warszawa 1988

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 all, not the perception of individuality in man, but only a quantifiable element of social mass or, at most, useful functionality on a strategic chessboard. The most important thing in the case of the plot, however, is to operate the functions of constructing the illusion of power and their influence on the ruler and the governed. Very often power turns out to be a game of appearances, to which both the decision-makers and their subordinates are subjected. And this in turn shows power not only as a reality filled with false intentions and apparent gestures, but above all as a space of meanings, mechanisms and behaviors that awaken both the most beautiful and the most terrifying in man. In Laboratoriumnr 820 , which is probably the most interesting literary text of the discussed three Wolski's works, for the first time introduces very clear allusions to the ways of exercising power characteristic of the mechanisms present in the countries of the so-called popular democracy. We are dealing here with an image of the creation by the authorities of a closed and completely isolated wife, in which the inhabitants are subjected to systematic brainwashing. The most important thing, however, is that Wolski did not stop using this poetics even after 1989. Antybaśnie21 was created at that time, in which fantastic and fairy-tale themes are combined with comments on the politics of the Third (dating from 1989). Thus Wolski not only closes the socialist period with a part of his work, but is one of the first to begin commenting on the new power structures. What is important is that, using fantasy, he initiated a satirical model of reference to politics, and by linking fantasy to criminal and historical themes, and he opened the way for himself to political thrillers and political fiction novels, in which he will later begin to argue with the official vision of Poland's recent history. The period of totalitarian domination in the Polish social and political reality, ending in 1989, also closes the sociological model of Polish fantasy. The main feature of fantasy novels using political motifs was an attempt to intellectually demythologize the system of power based on systemic lie and violence.

3. The search for a new order after 1989 The 1989 Solidarity Revolution not only enabled the introduction of a democratic model of power, but also provided an opportunity to discuss Polish political tradition and recent history. This was connected on the one hand with the issue of both the discovery of the mechanisms of socialist power, including the element of creating new elites and the behavior of representatives of the former elites. This resulted in the emergence of three fundamental themes in prose and political polemics. The first one was related to the return to polish history in order to search for the mechanisms of the collapse and rebirth of statehood. The second was connected with the discovery of the true history of Poland from the times of socialist rule. The third was connected with cultural and symbols important for Polish statehood and identity. All these themes found their literary realizations in the fantasy novels written during this period. It should be noted at the outset that the use of political motives in the 1989 fantasy novels is a much more complex phenomenon than in earlier periods.

3.1. Polemic strategies Among the authors of polemic novels, the most interesting seems to be the aforementioned Marcin Wolski. In his novels there appear both motifs of alternative stories and literary

20 M. Wolski, Laboratorium nr 8, Warszawa 1980. 21 M. Wolski, Antybaśnie, Warszawa 1991.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 polemics and even accusations. However, the most interesting group of texts devoted to power is made up of novels in which Wolski focuses his action around the recent history of Poland. These texts have a slightly different poetics, as well as a precise perspective on the above mentioned issues. In the trilogy, which is made up of three stories (Nieprawełóże25,Noblista26, Kryzys historii27), a complex picture of reality from the times of the People's Republic of Poland appears. The first novel brings a very radical and different from that contained in textbooks image of the native apparatus of communist politicians and decision makers. The beginning of the plot is set in the events of World War II, but they are different from the version contained in the textbooks and made public. Similarly, we see different attitudes of the characters, who are commonly known political figures in situations where they appear in public and where their lives are in intimate privacy. To this should be added the mechanism of historical and political lies commonly used by them, which is clearly shown by the theme of the struggle of the left-wing underground with the AK. The result is that the question arises as to what motivated these people when they betrayed AK soldiers during the Uprising, if patriotism, then what kind of patriotism, because it was certainly different from that of other Poles. In addition to this image of falsification of history, liquidation of opponents, change of perception of important issues of raison d'etat, there is a ubiquitous hypocrisy, which is supposed to hide their relations with the hegemon from the East and the true face of power in Poland. This mechanism of conspiracy, of political lying, has all the hallmarks of betrayal functioning according to the "who with whom against whom" mechanism. Wolski introduces the Soviet secret service to the game here. In the second novel of this trilogy, i.e. Noblista, there appears a figure of a contemporary Polish Nobel Prize winner, who has been living in exile for years, but who remains a moral and spiritual teacher for Poles in the country. We are not only dealing with falsification of history or our own biography, but we also touch upon the issue of the "Hegelian bite" and its effects both in the political and cultural perspective, and above all individual. As a result, there appears such an image of the intellectual elite, which entered into alliance with the people's power for often mercantilist reasons, rejecting the ethos in which it was educated for its own material benefit. It later created a "modified" image of reality and man, for the use of the new authorities and for their own glory; they begin to believe in their own Promethean’s. But when the political reality changed radically, one had to find an excuse for one's own betrayal or try to hide it at all costs. Thus Wolski points to two important aspects of the Polish experience of popular democracy. The first one was based on entanglement in its mechanisms and reasons for making such decisions which had nothing to do with ideology, and the second one appeared already after 1989, when the participants of those events, who were then consumers of the new order, did everything to falsify their own history. This is all the more complicated because as public figures and in addition creating models of cultural attitudes, they were in the eyes of many authorities whose fated biographies were supposed to substantiate the theses they proclaimed. To show the true version of their secret biographies after 1989 would not only have to disqualify their cultural message but also their own. The thread of the secret services of other countries influencing Polish politics led Wolski in consequence to the novel 7:27 to Smolensk22. From the plane crash near Smolensk in 2010, in which President Lech Kaczynski was killed, Wolski made a terrorist attack organized by foreign services. This novel, as well as the next Dzieńzapłaty23 not only takes up the themes

22 M. Wolski, 7:27 do Smoleoska, Poznao 2014. 23 M. Wolski, Dzieo zapłaty, Poznao 2015.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 of great politics, but above all, it fits into the political exploitation of this in Polish domestic politics.

3.2. Mirrors of and grotesque Much more interesting are the novels in which Wolski attempts to satirically portray contemporary politicians such as President Lech Walesa (Cudnad Wisłą24) or Bronisław Komorowski (Prezydent von Dyzma25). A completely different political aspect is taken up by the novel Post-Polonia, in which important figures of cultural present in the fantastic realities of the new political order are reduced to absurd. This game of symbolic figures of cultural heroes, known to all readers, is the first attempt to redefine, in this case, the satirical tradition based on the 19th patterns. Wolski also returns to satirical novels written before 1989, such as Agent Dołu, Czarcipomiot26 , in which, playing with the Millennium , he shows the effects of the transformation in a curved mirror. Unfortunately, the attractiveness of his vision is also associated with the Polish political and economic model, whose effects both before and after 1989 still leaves much to be desired. For this reason, well-known radio plays such as Matriarchat27, which have many features in common with the film Seksmisja, a from before 1989 ridiculing the system of totalitarian power shown in fantastic reality, are published in the form of the novel Świnka28, Matriarchat. The satirical treatment of politics in times of transformation indicates a considerable distance that at least some readers have from public events. Wolski satirically treats current politics as a political crime scene of the 13Gabinet29 . He does not escape from satirical exaggeration of the attitudes and characteristics of the most important political players, including presidents. And he resents the national mythology from its romantic patterns, which he parodies by inscribing them into the Faustian model present in the trilogy Agent dołu, to the parody of the contemporary political and social situation in Poland and the European Union in the novel Post-Polonia. Here, he also introduces characters legibly linked to great literary figures of Polish tradition such as Kordian. All these heroes as well as historical motifs known from national literature are inscribed here in a world turned around and as a result are satirically re-evaluated. An even more radical procedure appears in the series of grotesque fantasy by Andrzej Pilipiuk devoted to the figure of Jakub Wędrowicz30. In subsequent novels both great Soviet leaders such as Lenin and Stalin become the object of grotesque exaggeration. The action of the Soviet intelligence services is also included in the framework of ridiculous grotesque techniques. Pilipiuk treats both popular and democratic power in the same way. In this extremely iconoclastic and ridiculous cycle, an important social aspect is visible. The Poles, for whom for years of captivity the historical tradition was sacred in a democratically changed state, are slowly beginning to take a distance from their own history and from themselves. However, this distance has so far been marked by only a few, albeit very popular proposals of literary fantasy. In his work Pilipiuk also introduces an absent sociological fantasy model of using political motifs to construct mechanisms that co-create the presented world, which are then also subject to grotesque revaluation. This is visible, for example, in

24 M. Wolski, Cud nad Wisłą, Warszawa 2010. 25 M. Wolski, Prezydent von Dyzma, Poznao 2013. 26 M Wolski, Agent Dołu Czarci pomiot, Warszawa 2009. 27 M. Wolski, Matriarchat, Lublin 2002. 28 M. Wolski, Świnka, Lublin 2002. 29 M. Wolski, 13 gabinet, Warszawa 2011. 30 A. Pilipiuk, Oblicza Wędrowycza, vol. 1-9, Lublin 2002-2019.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 the cycle with the Wampir31, in which we see vampires in the poor realities of the socialist economy forced to search for the goods necessary for life outside the market and looking jealously at their cousins from the USA. The poverty accompanying the ruin of the socialist economy becomes in this case a background for grotesquely depicted attitudes that no longer give rise to fear but only laughter. In Wampir z MO32, there will be ZOMO motives from the martial law period. In the Wampir z KC33, on the other hand, vampires are forced to relive the initial period of transformation with all its painful efforts to change the collapsing economy planned for the free market. This way of using political motives was much more creatively developed by other writers, which I will continue to write about.

3.3.Alternative stories Among Polish novels creating alternative stories, it is very difficult to indicate those in which political motives will not be one of the dominant compositional themes. Basically, there are three groups of texts related to different historical eras. The first of them is focused on medieval events. They usually deal with the question of alternative beginnings of Christianity in the areas of former Poland. In Jacek Inglot's novel Quietus34, the first edition of which took place in 1997, and in its extended version, the novel is after years in the series Zwrotniceczasu. The idea of Inglot is very interesting. It describes events taking place in the early middle Ages, in areas inhabited by the Glades. Except that Christians in his world are still treated as a suspicious sect and persecuted. However, the most important is the model of culture and state based on pagan models of Rome. Thus, Inglot shows how the state-forming procedure could proceed on the territory of Poland in reality, in which the fall of Rome does not take place and Christianity does not perform its cultural-creating function. A similar procedure is present in Konrad Lewandowski's micro-tale: Wysłannic z kabogini35 issued in a dylogy entitled Utopie36. In this case, however, Lewandowski is spinning a picture in which Poland was baptized and Latin culture. However, Casimir the Restorer, here often referred to as the Odstępca, rejects Christianity as an element threatening the cultural identity of the Glades and other peoples of the North and begins to look for ways to build a counterbalance for the Carolinian civilization based on the traditions of the Slavs. The result is an image in which an alliance of the pagan peoples of the North is formed to oppose the impulses of the Emperor and the Pope. The most interesting, however, is the cultural model that is to guarantee political identity and identity. It is based on the observance of divine laws, traditionally sanctioned models of behavior and the primacy of wisdom and authority. No wonder that Lewandowski's volume got the title Utopie. The second novel is not so interesting anymore, the author recreates the image of 15th century Europe, where the Battle of Grunwald does not take place due to the unusual behavior on the battlefield of Queen Hedwig, and Hussite movements are suppressed by Joan of D'Arc, who then becomes Queen of Poland. In this case, we also have an interesting speculation showing knightly Europe, in which knightly ethos is more important than political strategies and games. The most interesting novel in this collection is Wieczny Grunwald37 by Szczepan Twardoch, in which

31 A. Pilipiuk, Cykl z Wampirem, vol. 1-3, Lublin 2011-2018. 32 A. Pilipiuk, Wampir z MO, Lublin 2013. 33 A. Pilipiuk, Wampir z KC, Lublin 2018. 34 J. Inglot, Quietus, Wrocław 1997. 35 K. Lewandowski, Wysłanniczka bogini, [in: ] K. Lewandowski, Utopie, Warszawa 2014. 36 K. Lewandowski, Utopie, Warszawa 2014. 37 Sz. Twardoch, Wieczny Grunwald, Warszawa 2010.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 the author not only allows himself to overthrow knightly ethos. The main character, Paszek, is looking for his own identity thrown into the whirlwind of historical disputes between Poland and the Teutonic Order and the German element. His death opens a new dimension of the action, which presents an eternal between Poland and Germany, taking place in the past, present and future. New technologies and global destruction that this conflict leads to only deepens the content describing the conditions of people taking part in this conflict. The second group of novels focuses on the January Uprising, which was connected with the announcement by the National Centre of Culture of a competition for a novel with alternative history on the next anniversary of this national uprising of 1863. As a result, an entire publishing series called Zwrotnice Czasu (Crossovers of Time) was created, in which subsequent novels creating alternative stories of Polish history were published. The first novel was Gambit Wielopolskiego38 by Wojciech Przechrzta. A well-written SF, whose action takes place in the XXII century. Two Poles remaining in the service of the Tsar discuss the reasons for the lack of the uprising. One of them is a former rebel who returned to the Tsar's service, the other is a conspirator who, if he wants to live, must give up the rebellion. The speculative essence of this novel is the question of what the Polish history would have looked like if the uprising had not broken out, and the Poles would have become a significant national minority of the years later. In a similar there was speculation in the novel Polskanieistnieje39 by Wojciech Orliński. In this case we are dealing with a picture of Europe where Poland does not exist. This is the result of the transformation of the (historical) workers' strikes of 1877 in several US cities into an (alternative) revolution. As a result, the revolutionary movement moves to Europe, the power is taken over by workers in countries that existed within the 1877 borders, when Poland did not exist. Lewandowski approached the issue of the uprising slightly differently in his novel Orzełbielszyniż gołębica40, in this case the January Uprising under the command of Romuald Traugutt is victorious, thanks to armored weapons and the superiority of Polish technological thought. We have here a whole range of historically important figures with Emilia Plater still alive. The most interesting, however, is related to the introduction of alternative realities and the possibility of entering them, and thus changing history. Traugutt, who was shot by the on the Citadel in Lewandowski's novel, is a Traugutt who has already defeated the Russians in alternative reality, which leaves room for further speculation. Which, unfortunately, we no longer find in the novel. The next range of topics includes issues related to the contemporary history of Poland, but most often they deal with the events of World War II. In the text Ogień41 of Łukasz Orbitowski connects the history of the contemporary living, conflicted brothers with an alternative vision of the history of Józef Kuraś alias "Ogień" of the ZWZ soldier, commander of the "Blyskawica" grouping, who died in 1947. Orbitowski built a literary picture, in which two planes of time intertwine: contemporary and past, in which the events of the last days of "Ogień" life take place. He connects the fate of the conflicted brothers with the fictitious relationship between Kuraś and the head of the WUBP Department III Stanislaw Wałach, thanks to which he manages to combine questions about the nature of contemporary Poles with questions about the sense of patriotism, Polishness and his own existence. In the novel

38 W. Przechrzta, Gambit Wielopolskiego, Warszawa 2013. 39 W. Orlioski Polska nie istnieje, Warszawa 2015. 40 K. Lewandowski, Orzeł bielszy niż gołębica, Warszawa 2013. 41 Ł. Orbitowski, Ogieo, Warszawa 2012.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020

Wallenrod42, Marcin Wolski builds an alternative story in which Józef Piłsudski allows the Germans to build an extraterritorial corridor running eastwards through Poland, aptly anticipating the military conflict between Germany and the . Moreover, he entered into an alliance with the German Reich against Moscow. As a result of such efforts, the fate of World War II was completely different. Poland wins a tactical battle with Germany and becomes an important European state. about Poland's superpower can be seen even more in Wallenrod's novel Mocarstwo, a continuation of Wallenrod. A similar trick can be seen in Maciej Parowski's novel Burza43, where in September 1939 heavy rainfall contributed to the defeat of German troops and Hitler was sent to St. Helen's Island.

3.4.Background novels Background novels are novels in which political themes are reduced to the most dynamic ones, whose primary function is to co-create the realities of the era. Political themes are then treated as part of a mosaic intended by the author to create a literary reality attractive to the reader. This is the case with some steampunk novels, for example. This can be indicated for example by the famous novel Czterdzieściicztery44 by Krzysztof Piskorski. Already its title, which is a clear reference to 's Dziady45 (one of the most important texts of Polish ), points to the author's intriguing endeavor. What is significant, however, is that in this novel, both political themes and motifs become an element of a literary game that does not enter into any cognitive interaction with non-literary reality. We have here, admittedly, a whole group of threads related to the activities known from the history of Poles during the Great Emigration. However, the fantastic aspect related to the poetics characteristic of the stamps remains the main dominant feature. The same is true of the series Materia Prima46 by Adam Przechrzta, where, against the background of the partitioning policy of the Tsarist Russia, the main plot motif is connected with the fantastic influence of alchemy on political events. We find there a thread connecting the process of regaining independence by Poles with the magic operating in this world. However, from the perspective of the construction of the plot, the magical theme is more important. Whereas the political-historical background becomes an attractive game space with historical and political facts shown by a new, magical perspective, which completely changes political reality in this world. Thus, in Przechrzta's work, one can still point to the presence of some kind of speculation on the history of Poland. They are more focused on the question about the possible models of solutions. The fact of introducing magic reduces them to the function of a certain aesthetic attractiveness. In a similar way, political motives are used by the creators of historical criminal fantasy. In Robert Foryś's novels such as Zagarśćc z erwońców47 or Z zimnąkrwią48 , the international politics of the royal court in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially the moments not explained by historians, become the background for the introduction of the characteristic fantasy . Another type of novels that operate on the political issues brought by the background are those that introduce esoteric conditionings of political actions, as it is the

42 M. Wolski, Wallenrod, Warszawa 2012. 43 M. Parowski, Burza Ucieczka z Warszawy ‘ 40, Warszawa 2013. 44 K. Piskorski, Czterdzieści i cztery, Kraków 2016. 45 A, Mickiewicz, , Warszawa 1973. 46 A. Przechrzta, Materia Prima, vol. 1-3, Warszawa 2016-2018. 47 R. Foryś, Za garśd czerwooców, Lublin 2010. 48 R. Foryś, Z zimną krwią, Lublin 2011.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 case with Dariusz Domagalski's Krzyżacki series, where the relations between the Kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Knights of the Teutonic Knights are essentially conditioned by a mystical system of forces derived literarily from the Tree of Life described in Kabała. A complete reduction in the significance of political motifs can be found in novels creating alternative models of Poland appearing in such novels as Wiedźma Jego Królewskiej Mości49by Magdalena Kubasiewicz or Rafał Majka's Pokójświatów50 . In both cases the political content was reduced to an aesthetic ornament. Their links with historical and political patterns from literary reality are only traceable. A completely different model of using political motifs as a background can be found in the novel Lód51 by Jacek Dukaj. This is a world in which the outbreak of did not occur; Poles still live under the partition without their own statehood. Political motifs function here in two orders. The first one is connected with an attempt to solve the mystery of the ice destroying the Russian Empire, and the second one is connected with the political relations of the state apparatus of the invader against the actions of the Poles to regain independence. The fantastic theme is obviously dominant, but Dukaj has created such a precise picture of the Russian Empire from the times of the partitions that the second theme is difficult to reduce to the function of an aesthetic ornament. The last group of novels using political themes and motifs is connected with visions of the future. Most often it is a distant future, as in Tomasz Terlikowski's Operacja „Chusta”52 , which shows a vision of Europe rejecting and delegitimizing Christianity. Not only is the Vatican State being liquidated, but the Pope has been expelled from Rome and is in exile in . Christians have been locked up in ghettos and the political police are fighting religious fundamentalism. Since the author is a well-known religious publicist in Poland, the novel's openly polemical character is in line with the reality of the political dispute in Poland between representatives of left and right-wing factions. Another political motive appears in the second Kankan nawulkanie53 by Marek Oramus where a tragicomic vision of the future of Poland and the European Union was created. Here the motive of the threat from Islamic terrorism already appears. Most authors create novels that try to find the basic mechanisms governing this phenomenon. The first exposing novel is Wolski's Eurodżihad54, which clearly embeds the sources of this type of terror in economic practices. The second one is also the theme of the novel Requiem dla Europy55 by Paweł Kempczyński, which contains a picture of a new political model after World War III. Europe is already completely dominated by the Third World emigrants. Nobody controls the economy, agriculture is in total collapse and industry is not functioning due to a lack of professional staff. Among the fantasy novels that take up political themes, there are also attempts to create visions of a darker future. This is the case, for example, in Dukaj's Perfekcyjnaniedoskonałość56, describing the world of a post-man from the XXIX century. Both in this novel and in Innych Pieśniach57 we are dealing with the creation of completely new worlds. It may be a new technology or, as in Innych Pieśniach, a model of physics based

49 M. Kubasiewicz, Wiedźma jego królewskiej mości, Bydgoszcz 2017. 50 R. Majka, Pokój światów, Warszawa 2014. 51 J. Dukaj, Lód, Kraków 2007. 52 T. Terlikowski, Operacja „Chusta”, Warszawa 2010. 53 M. Oramus, Kankan na wulkanie, Warszawa 2009. 54 M. Wolski, Eurodżihad, Warszawa 2008. 55 P. Kempczyoski, Requiem dla Europy, Warszawa 2007. 56 J. Dukaj, Perfekcyjna niedoskonałośd, Kraków 2004. 57 J. Dukaj, Inne pieśni, Kraków 2003.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 on Aristotle's Treatise of Heaven58 still supported by his Metaphysics59. In both cases, not only are new rules forming a social community created, but also very interesting visions of political mechanisms functioning there. It turns out that at the level of the principals the modifications of political practices in these completely fantastic worlds are small. What is important, however, is that such completely new worlds of fantastic technologies and social structures create a model moral laboratory where both attitudes and political states of things can be tested. Two novels are an example of this type of literary activity: Xawras Wyżryniinnefikcjenarodowe60 by Jacek Dukaj and Wieczny Grunwald Twardoch. In the first one, there is the problem of the price to be paid in the fight for independence and the moral negation of terror in this type of fight. This is a very clear reference to the great myth of Polish Romanticism, written in the Kordian figure by Juliusz Słowacki in the Kordian61 drama. The second novel, on the other hand, raises a few important issues: the culturally- creative function of war related to its dehumanizing action and also seeks an answer to the question of the place of the individual in long-lasting national conflicts. They often contain fewer antagonisms related to the enemy and more identity based on community tradition. Thus, the war in Twardoch becomes a self-perpetuating phenomenon in which the source of hostility is the already mythologized vision of the enemy and the need to fight embedded in it. This type of prose, however, appears very rarely and requires high intellectual competence of both the author and the recipient. Another model of handling political threads is connected with political or rather political-war thrillers. The classic representative of this trend is the writer hiding his identity under the pseudonym of Vladimir Wolff. He is the author of a very interesting tetralogy Stalowakurtyna62, in which he describes hybrid wars between the Russian Federation and , and also creates models of potential military conflicts occurring in Central Europe as a result of terrorist attacks in Russia, famine in Belarus or falling political quotations of the President of the Russian Federation. In these local conflicts, not only are their global consequences indicated, but above all, a model of hybrid actions is visible in practice. The whole tetralogy uses the same mechanism to point out the political sources of the conflict outbreak, the economic and political account present in its planning, the involvement of the secret services, and the use of the media. These three elements become not only the basis for official military actions, but above all, for following these events in three circles: political, commanding and military. This type of novel has now become so readily readable that a publishing house has been established to publish only military novels in the vast majority related to contemporary political events.

4. Completion To sum up, an attempt to describe a literary phenomenon in such an extensive period of time will always be doomed to considerable shortcuts and reductions. This applies here both to the lack of in-depth analyses of the political situations in which specific works were created, and to the reduction to a minimum of the analysis of specific literary texts and the selection of their catalog. However, thanks to this acronymity, the whole complex mechanism of the

58 Arystoteles, O niebie, translated by P. Siwek, warszawa 1980. 59 Arystoteles, Metafizyka, translated by M. Krąpiec, T. Żeleźniak, A. Maryniarczyk, Lublin 2017. 60 J. Dukaj, XawrasWyżryn i inne fikcje narodowe, Kraków 2004. 61 J. Słowacki, Kordian, Warszawa 1992. 62 V. Wolf, Stalowa kurtyna, vol. 1-6, Ustroo 2010-2014.

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 literary phenomenon of using political motifs in contemporary Polish fantasy prose has been outlined. During this period there are three fundamental political stages to which the novels are linked. The first is related to the last years of 123 years of captivity and the first years of independence regained in 1918. The second period begins in 1945, when Poland and many other Central European countries were transferred to the zone of political, military and economic influence of Moscow by a joint decision of the leaders of the USA, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. The third and last period marks 1989 and the restoration of political independence through the peaceful revolution of Solidarity. In the first period there are two main trends. One of them is connected with literary speculation connected with the figures of and philosophical questions about both the nature of political power and the influence of an outstanding individual. In the second trend, addressed to young people, there is already a category of ethos, its cultural conditionings and influence on the political actions of individual heroes. In the second period, three main streams should also be identified. The first one is related to the work influenced by Soviet directives. Because before the Second World War of this kind of influence in Poland, for obvious reasons, a literary model allowing for politically attractive socialist realism with fantasy-scientific prose was not developed. As a result of this trend's novels did not have a significant impact on Polish fantasy. Much more important were novels from the sociological current of Polish fantasy. There were attempts to falsify the mythology of the . Fantastic figures of the social order were not only diagnosed as dysfunctional but also based on systemic lies and violence. The most important practice determining the lack of individual consent to remain in such a system was to aim at discovering the truth about the nature of that system. The third current, represented by few publications, is connected with the use of political motives within the framework of satirical fantasy. The third period brings the most elaborate collection of literary practices using political motifs. The literary practices are connected both with a complicated and very dynamic situation on the latest political scene and with attempts to define external dominants influencing the contemporary socio-political reality of Poland. The first group is connected with novels polemicizing with official recent history. There are speculative renarations of recent history using conspiracy models of history. Most often they are connected with themes describing the influence of the GRU and KGB on Polish internal and external politics. The main thesis of these novels is that Poland is still treated by the Russian Federation as its sphere of influence. This results not only in a question about the nature of Poland's independence, but also about the vulnerability of state structures to the influence of Russian secret services. A specific subgroup of this trend is a collection of novels that subject the period of democratic transformation after 1989 to satirical and sometimes even grotesque demythologization. The second group consists of a novel focused on alternative histories, the subject of these novels being events related to alternative visions of national uprisings and World War II. The last group is determined by novels designing the political future of Poland. One can find here both dystopian models being the result of global cataclysms or the effect of technologies that change the human condition in the post-humanistic sense and the social and political consequences of this state of affairs. The second group consists of military novels related to speculation on potential political conflicts and their war consequences initiated at the interface between the Russian Federation and NATO and non- associated countries. The last group of novels closes the whole paradigm of the discussed

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American Journal of Humanities and Social Science (AJHSS) Volume 6, 2020 novels with a specific theme. These are novels in which politics becomes a domain of philosophical speculation closed within the poetics of the fantastic worlds. The essential characteristic of the whole discussed phenomenon is a certain structural regularity present in these novels. They do not reduce political motives to the simple mechanism of a moral laboratory, which can be a literary work for the phenomenon under investigation. The authors accept not only the dominance of political pragmatics, but also its social functioning and fragmentation. This is possible thanks to the three decision-making fields. The first is the representatives of the authorities, the second is the seemingly anonymous society and the third is the opponents of the political system. The first one allows following both the source conditions of power and its functional use. The second indicates the unit price that members of a given community bear. The third one allows following the mechanisms of political contestation and their consequences. These three sealalizations, inscribed in important political contexts for Polish readers, determined the attractiveness of the above mentioned novels both in literary and non-literary political reality, creating the possibility of a creative and individualized approach to it.

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