Tadeusz Różewicz and Modern Identity in Poland Since the Second World War
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Tadeusz Różewicz and Modern Identity in Poland since the Second World War Wojciech Browarny TADEUSZ RóżeWICZ AND MODERN IDENTITY IN POLAND SINCE THE SECOND WORLD WAR Wojciech Browarny The publication of this book was financed by Narodowy Program Rozwoju Humanistyki (grant no. 3aH 15 0058 83) obtained from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Republic of Poland) Original Title: Tadeusz Różewicz i nowoczesna tożsamość Copyright for the Polish edition by Wojciech Browarny and Towarzystwo Autorów i Wydawców Prac Naukowych UNIVERSITAS, Kraków 2013 Review (Polish version): Piotr Śliwiński Copyright for the English edition: we are using Creative Commons public licenses NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License Project Editor: Bartosz Ryż Translated by: Piotr Zazula Proofreading by: Matthew Bastock Typesetting: Studio Grafpa, www.grafpa.pl Wrocław 2019 ISBN PDF 978-83-63270-17-9 Projekt Nauka. Fundacja na rzecz promocji nauki polskiej [email protected] www.projekt-nauka.com To My Parents TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Abbreviations ................................. 7 Tadeusz Różewicz’s Narratives and Modern Identity (an Introduction) .................................... 9 Narrating Identity .................................. 12 Tadeusz Różewicz and Modernity ...................... 21 Różewicz’s Narratives ................................ 29 The Model and Aims of Description . 38 1. The adventures of an ideologist . 51 The “Clerk” and the “New Intellectual” . 52 Between Romanticism and Modern Consciousness . 60 Heroic Fictions .................................... 72 The “New Man’s” Identity ............................ 87 Worldview and Everyday Life ......................... 100 The Limits of Ideology .............................. 115 The End of a Certain “Covenant” ...................... 129 2. Culture, Memory And Community ................... 145 The Symbolic Universe and the “Small Stabilization” ....... 146 Communist Poland as a Cultural State .................. 158 Two Educational Projects ............................ 174 Memory Problems .................................. 191 The “Old Days” Identity ............................. 198 The Cultivated Person in Quotation Marks . 216 Death in Culture ................................... 238 Identity for Everyone . 263 3. I, The Reader ..................................... 269 The Birth of the Modern Reader ....................... 276 Reading as Totality and Dialogue ...................... 282 The World “Seen” in the Text ......................... 289 The Cultural Space Project ........................... 293 The Reading and the Read . 305 Lector and Biography ............................... 312 The Meaning of Reading ............................. 316 4. Anatomy Of Experience ............................ 319 Existence and Daily Life ............................. 325 Between the Body and the World ...................... 333 The Somatic Aspect of History ........................ 349 Several Embodiments of the Starveling .................. 371 The Consumption of Representations . 377 Identity Embodied and Represented .................... 407 6 | Table Of Contents 5. Space In Narrative ................................. 414 Sites and Space .................................... 414 Landscapes of the Beginning (Myths and Experiences) ...... 434 “Glass Houses” and Other Utopias ..................... 448 Westward Ho! (Early Reportages) ...................... 466 Migration and Safe Haven ............................ 486 Place as a “Ravaged” Form ........................... 502 Topobiography .................................... 543 6. Biographical Identity And Signature .................. 550 Signature and identity ............................... 550 The Limits of the Autobiographical Agreement ............ 559 The Textual Narrator -agent in the “Church of the Individual” ........................... 567 Conclusion ......................................... 576 Bibliography ........................................ 581 Tadeusz Różewicz's Texts ............................. 581 Texts cited from press editions . 581 Primary Sources and Secondary Sources ................. 582 Bibliographical Note ................................. 619 Summary .............................................620 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Unless otherwise noted, the bibliographical abbreviations used in this volume refer to the following works: I–XII – Utwory zebrane [Collected Works], vol. I–XII, Wrocław 2003– 2006. E – Echa leśne [Forest Echoes], Warszawa 1985. K – Kartki z Węgier [Notes from Hungary], Warszawa 1953. Ko – Korespondencja [Correspondence], ed. K. Czerni, Kraków 2009 (Tadeusz Różewicz, Zofia Nowosielska and Jerzy Nowosiel- ski). M – Matka odchodzi [Mother Departs], Wrocław 1999 (quotes from: Utwory zebrane, vol. XI, Wrocław 2004). Ma – Margines, ale … [Marginal, but still …], ed. J. Stolarczyk, Wrocław 2010. Mp – Most płynie do Szczecina [A Bridge Flows to Szczecin], in: Wejście w kraj. Wybór reportaży z lat 1944–1964 [Into the Country: Se- lected Reportage from the Years 1944–1964], ed. Z. Stolarek, vol. I, Warszawa 1965. N – Nasz starszy brat [Our Elder Brother], ed. T. Różewicz, Wrocław 1992 (quotes from: Utwory zebrane, vol. XII, Wrocław 2004). 8 | List of Abbreviations O – Opadły liscie z drzew [The Leaves Have Fallen from the Trees], Warszawa 1955. U – Uśmiechy [Smiles], Warszawa 1955 (quotes from the Warsaw 1957 edition) W – Wbrew sobie. Rozmowy z Tadeuszem Różewiczem [Against Your- self: Conversations with Tadeusz Różewicz], ed. J. Stolarczyk, Wrocław 2011. TADEUSZ RóżeWICZ’S NARRATIVES AND MODERN IDENTITY (AN INTRODUCTION) adeusz Różewicz was a modern writer rooted in modernity, a term Tthat is understood both as a historical epoch and a type of expe- rience. The temporal boundaries and the very concept of modernity, however, are debatable. If we assume, following Anthony Giddens, that modernity encompasses such phenomena as systematic industrialization and urbanization, the dominance of the national state over other politi- co-territorial forms of collective existence, political or economic control of information and public space, abrupt changes in manners and mores, revision of key traditions, and accessibility of culture and education, then the modern experience in Central Europe became commonplace in the 20th century.1 Some of those defining characteristics materialized in Po- land simultaneously with Western countries, while others emerged later, i.e. only in the second half of the previous century, when modernity as a social project had already generated critical awareness of its moral and political consequences, which was typical of late modernity.2 1 A. Giddens, Nowoczesność i tożsamość. “Ja” i społeczeństwo w epoce późnej nowoczesności, trans. A. Szulżycka, Warszawa 2002. 2 This “paradox of asynchronization” of modernity in post-World War Two Poland has been pointed out by Teresa Walas, among others. Cf. T. Walas, Zrozumieć swój czas. Kultura polska po komunizmie – rekonesans, Kraków 2003, pp. 39–47. 10 | Tadeusz Różewicz’s Narratives and Modern Identity (an Introduction) The existential and social experience of modernity invariably involves modern identity. Its philosophical foundation, according to Charles Tay- lor, is first, modern inwardness, the sense of ourselves as beings with inner depths and the connected notion that we are ‘selves’; second, the affir- mation of ordinary life which develops from the early modern period; third, the expressivist notion of nature as an inner moral source.3 This list of modernity’s defining characteristics could of course be expanded. At this point, though, it is enough to stress its reflective and creative aspect. For Taylor does not see it as a static, closed structure ac- counting for modern man’s experience, but rather as an indispensable “cognitive framework”, defined and verified in the course of individual searches for and the resultant expressions of the meaning of life. The lat- ter observation seems particularly important. But the invocation of meaning also comes from our awareness of how much the search involves articulation. We find the sense of life through articulating it. And moderns have become acutely aware of how much sense being there for us depends on our own powers of ex- pression. Discovering here depends on, is interwoven with, inventing. Finding a sense to life depends on framing meaningful expressions which are adequate.4 Taylor’s project implies that modern self-awareness is invariably linked to one’s self-creation capabilities. The identity of the modern 3 Ch. Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge University Press 1989, p. x. 4 Ibid., p. 18. Tadeusz Różewicz’s Narratives and Modern Identity (an Introduction) | 11 self is circumscribed by its ability to make symbolic sense of one’s life. Thus, identity could be viewed as an articulation of experience; moral systems, ideas, cultural artefacts, social relations and political events supply one’s identity with sources of justification or means of expres- sion, but they cannot deliver a comprehensive, all-encompassing and permanent meaning. The modern individual, once conscious of the problem of his/her identification, begins to look for the meaning on their own, creating it personally, as it were, though at the same time s/ he invariably participates in history and the collective understanding of reality. Consequently, individual identity is all about referring one’s personal experience to pre-existing cultural meanings and patterns