Identity in Różewicz’s texts has already been discussed by numerous scholars and critics in terms of philosophical theories of selfhood – those, for example, emerging from the works of Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Lévinas, Jacques Lacan, and Melanie Klein. Based on these theories, different pro-jects of the “Różewicz man” (in terms of his character or persona) have
49 “Modern identity defines the course of one’s life, shows the direction it is headed in, constitutes a permanent element of psychological reality. The post-modern identity is temporary, binding only ‘until further notice’, does not show any directions, does not define anything. One might say, it boils down to a search for self-identification.” S. Grotowska, op. cit., p. 84.
The Model and Aims of Description | 39
been compellingly applied to the interpretation of the writer’s texts.50 Some of these interpretations were truly revelatory, especially those in the fields of poetry and drama. None of them, however, managed to cover all the crucial problems of modern identity raised by Różewicz in his prose.
I deal with those in later parts of this book, though I prefer to apply the narrativist model of description. It is not an attempt to transfer the discussion of Różewicz’s work entirely into the realm of philosophy and social sciences, however, thereby eschewing historical-literary tools for interpreting literary works and the context in which they were published.
In discussing his texts, I shall attempt instead to maintain a historicist perspective while simultaneously making the most of scholarly and criti-cal perspectives on them.51
50 After 1989, cf.: D. Szczukowski, Tadeusz Różewicz wobec niewyrażalnego, Kraków 2008; T. Kunz, Strategie negatywne w poezji Tadeusza Różewicza. Od poetyki tekstu do poetyki lektury, Kraków 2005;
J. Potkański, Sobowtór. Różewicz a psychoanaliza Jacquesa Lacana i Melanii Klein, Warszawa 2004;
S. Burkot, Neopozytywistyczne konteksty twórczości Tadeusza Różewicza, “Ruch Literacki” 2002, no.
4–5; A. Skrendo, Tadeusz Różewicz i granice literatury. Poetyka i etyka transgresji, Kraków 2002;
A. Krajeńska, Osoba w dramacie i dramat osobny, in: Osoba w literaturze i komunikacji literack-iej, eds E. Balcerzan, W. Bolecki, Warszawa 2000; R. Cieślak, Od Grünewalda do Bacona. Gra o tożsamość w poezji Tadeusza Różewicza, in: Ponowoczesność a tożsamość, eds B. Tokarz, S. Piskor, Katowice 1997; R. Cieślak, Oko poety. Poezja Tadeusza Różewicza wobec sztuk widowiskowych, Gdańsk 1999; E. Kuźma, Kto mówi w utworach Tadeusza Różewicza?, in: Zobaczyć poetę. Materiały z konferencji “Twórczość Tadeusza Różewicza”, eds E. Guderian-Czaplińska, E. Kalemba-Kasprzak, Poznań 1993; E. Łoch, Koncepcja człowieka w prozie Tadeusza Różewicza, in: id., Między autorem – narratorem – bohaterem a czytelnikiem, Lublin 1991.
51 I engage in a polemic with both earlier and contemporary readings of Różewicz, taking into ac-count diverse perspectives on his prose and, occasionally, poetry and drama. Among the concepts of the Różewicz speaker (or poetic persona), the ones that proved most useful to me for the purpose of this book came from the texts of A. Werner, H. Zaworska, A. Skrendo, D. Szczukowski, and R. Cieślak. I argue with them not only on the issues of the anthropological or ethical dimensions of the Różewicz persona (both his “I” and “we”) but also about his situation within the text. Among the several cited interpretations of the dramatic works I regard as crucial, the essays and studies by J. Kelera, S. Gębala, M. Piwińska, A. Werner, M. Dziewulska, and T. Żukowski, whose diagnoses of the conflict between cultural tradition or political “duty” and the quotidian and somatic experi-ence of modern man in the works of Różewicz I either deem apt and attempt to expand upon or – as in the cases of Małgorzata Dziewulska and Andrzej Werner – I approach critically.
40 | Tadeusz Różewicz’s Narratives and Modern Identity (an Introduction)
The individual’s identity and selfhood inscribed in literary text can be paraphrased or described in a discursive mode, which invariably trans-forms or even reduces the ambiguity of the artistic perspective. I acknowl-edge this inevitability. Recognizing the cognitive limitations inherent in my model of reconstruction, I still believe it does not omit the crucial constituents of Różewicz’s vision of man, including those that have al-ready been observed and described. I try to refer to the most important of those, discussing some of them at length while merely mentioning the others. Making no claims about the superiority of my reconstruction model, I merely assume that it is adequate, i.e. internally consistent and capacious enough to describe Różewicz’s prose. What is more, the model identifies problems of modern identity that have hitherto gone unno-ticed. It is consistent and capacious – but only relatively speaking. Ac-cording to Kurt Gödel’s well-known first theorem, every model is either complete or consistent, unable to be both things simultaneously.
An efficient and adequate reconstruction can be carried out using the problem model, i.e. a system of axioms that make solving problems possible.52 The nominal model (theory) is used for formulating premises (hypotheses) thanks to which the issue can be decided upon or proved, its provableness resulting from a conscious act of reduction (simplification).
The real model, in turn, can be defined as “a class of objects or a class of situations meeting the preliminary criteria for the constituents of a given model in the nominal sense”.53 In short, the nominal model “tells us on what premises and conditions a particular issue becomes resolvable”.54 The real model, in turn, tells us if our preliminary assumptions are ful-filled by phenomena, situations, or concepts, i.e. whether the theory (the
52 On acceptable models of reconstruction – for any given system – cf. J. Giedymin’s Problemy, założenia, rozstrzygnięcia. Studia nad logicznymi podstawami nauk społecznych, Poznań 1964.
53 Ibid., p. 94.
54 Ibid., p. 177.
The Model and Aims of Description | 41
nominal model) is a real description of reality (or a part of it). The real model can be “a set of material objects, or things, but it can also be a class of ‘abstract’ objects, for example a set of points, a set of numbers, functions, etc.”55 The reading of a literary text – except for the radically referential kind – does not require a real model containing elements with physical attributes, but a real model in the semantic sense, i.e. a set of ideas and their interrelations. Applying the logical inference pattern in the humanities is not always possible or advisable; still, any scientific reasoning consists, to a certain extent, in model thinking. The nominal model used in this book is the narrativist concept of modern man, the sociological and philosophical project of his traits or identity behaviours, whereas the real model is the collection of identity narratives established in Polish literature and culture. Looking for them in Różewicz’s prose, I aim to establish whether identity narratives in their modern version are actually present in his texts, but also whether and how they are inter-preted, evaluated, tested, and stylistically processed by the writer.
I do not think that identity issues in Różewicz’s prose can ultimately be resolved through logical reasoning. Still, I would like to start with premises that will allow raising such issues by means of answerable ques-tions and soluble problems, meaningful in terms of narrativist herme-neutics. The model attributes of modern identity, merely listed below, should be therefore treated as the nominal model of my book, a set of hypotheses. I do not expect Różewicz’s prose to fully corroborate this model; in fact, I suspect that many of his works do not fulfil the nominal assumptions. I hope, however, that analysing the discrepancies between
“theory” and particular “cases” will also facilitate describing those identity problems in Różewicz’s texts that do not belong in the modern model.
55 Ibid., p. 95.
42 | Tadeusz Różewicz’s Narratives and Modern Identity (an Introduction)
(1) The Różewicz man experiences reality indirectly. His experiencing of the world – subjective but mediated and manifested in real culture – makes up one of the premises of his identity.
(2) A thinking and acting individual self is actualized as the narrative
“I”, one that makes conscious attempts at self-definition. His iden-tity may, though does not have to, constitute a meaningful whole, however temporary and provisional. Articulation is a necessary pre-condition for selfhood to exist.
(3) Man in Różewicz’s prose differentiates between his personal and col-lective identities, the latter bringing him closer to other people, but in the identity narrative he distinguishes between them, and con-nects and confronts them in different ways.
(4) Both his personal and collective identification is ethically loaded. The narrative self faces the problem of personal responsibility for the story about oneself or about others. The self’s self-awareness is predicated on the question of identity narrative’s intention and credibility.
(5) Existence in his experience has a temporal character. Immersed in history, that is in specific historical events, it is also time-oriented at the individual level, directed simultaneously at the past, present, and future.
(6) Identity in Różewicz’s prose needs a point of reference. The narrative self, therefore, refers to the image of others or that of his own from the past, relying on ready-made descriptions and stories about man, actualizing “being oneself” as a form of relation. Interactive and con-strued, this identity does not emerge directly from empirical being.
The theoretical model predicated on such premises is the concept of narrative identity. Consequently, when analysing literary works, I refer primarily to works of the aforementioned narrativists, but also – if need be – to other perspectives on selfhood in culture and the text, as well
The Model and Aims of Description | 43
as to general and thematic studies on socio-historical conditions for the emergence of modern identity, both personal and collective. I do not use Różewicz’s prose to prove any theory. The main goal of this book is to describe his narrative texts, because what interests me is not model identity as such but rather its empirically realized version, saturated with the individual’s historical experience as well as the contents of a particu-lar culture or tradition; that is, a model in the real sense. Needless to say, modernity in a number of Różewicz’s narratives provides a negative point of reference, the writer finding in the modern individual’s thoughts and actions the routine of social life and the pressures of mass culture.
Therefore I also apply the concept of narrative or reflective identity to my descriptions to that in the Różewicz man which does not fit the initially assumed theoretical model.
It is precisely these personal identity problems that I seek in Różewicz’s prose because his literary range is enormous, covering numer-ous aspects of Polish culture, with the author interpreting them from the vantage point of real existence and history. I assume therefore that by analysing his work, I will be able to describe and compare selected iden-tity narratives of modern man and, what is more, will probably discover how these narratives functioned in a specific culture and in the public sphere. My next assumption is that by reading Różewicz’s prose it will be possible to understand how the writer interprets and applies ready-made patterns or identity stories that permeate our tradition and our contem-porary times; similarly, it should be possible to infer from his texts what self-creation options national literature and history offer to the individu-al. Finally, I address what is probably the most important question: does Różewicz offer, in his prose, a new interpretation of Polish modernism – or, in other words, does he engage in a polemic with the grand narratives of Polish modernity? Even though I consciously limit the answer to the latter question to this book’s titular concern (i.e. modern identity) I do
44 | Tadeusz Różewicz’s Narratives and Modern Identity (an Introduction)
believe there are other fundamental dilemmas of modern culture that correspond to the problem of the individual’s identity.
What is it exactly that I find interesting in Tadeusz Różewicz’s prose?
I read his works in the context of identity narratives functioning in cul-ture and in historical-biographical stories, which raises the question of their modelling impact on the individual; what is it in those stories that constitutes a point of reference for the identity-seeking self? When and how does individual experience acquire intersubjective significance?
What are the conditions for its articulation in the public space? Did any new identification patterns appear in Polish modernity and, if so, what areas and phenomena of 20th-century culture or history acquired such a – model – significance? How and where was the line drawn between what is individual and what is collective in the identity of someone speaking and thinking “in Polish”? What was considered native to this identity and what was viewed as a foreign – for example: Western, bourgeois, Com-munist, German, Jewish, religiously or sexually non-normative – import, and how was this social-cultural “otherness” constructed back then? Seek-ing answers to these questions, I refer to such cultural anthropological terms as symbolic universe, collective memory, autobiographical identity, the body and space in culture, as well as those from the social sciences, such as interpersonal relations, public discourse, and communication community. Simply speaking, with their help I would like to describe the most important narrative forms and themes of Różewicz’s prose that make it possible for the writer to raise and articulate in a literary way the individual’s problems with identity (individual, personal, and collective) as well as the very process of Różewicz-the-writer arriving at his own unique identity narratives, resulting from the evolution of his own nar-rative conventions.
Reading Różewicz’s texts in this way, and by ordering the chapters in this book to cover identity from its most public forms (manifested
The Model and Aims of Description | 45
socially and coded in ideology or ethics) to the most private (individual) one, I pay particular attention to certain issues in Cultural Studies and Communication Studies. Based on the reconstruction model, I assume that even one’s most private identity-forming experiences are mediated through culture and language. Therefore, in Różewicz’s narratives I de-scribe and compare both the more collective premises of identity con-struction, e.g. history and cultural memory, ideology or tradition, and the more individual ones, including the body and existence, among oth-ers. The criterion for their selection results from this book’s narrativist presuppositions. Even the individual’s autobiographical identity is cre-ated and articulcre-ated within the framework of pre-existing culture and public space. That is why I am primarily concerned with the history of ideas and social relations, symbols and personality patterns; changes in social habits and everyday life as reflected in literary, political, or histori-cal narratives. Aware of the existence of other sources of identification, I try to acknowledge them, however indirectly and in the margins, as it were, of my main argument. I consider such issues as the person in the religious-personalist sense, eschatological perspectives on death, or essen-tialist and ahistorical nationhood, to be parts of a worldview or cultural tradition. As for performative identity, understood in Erving Goffman’s and other interactionists’ terms, I discuss the concept while analysing dif-ferent identity narratives, and not in a separate chapter, because I agree with their thesis that all modern identities are to some extent roles.56 Neither do I skip over such identity premises as the work ethic or the attitude to property ownership. Admittedly, homo oeconomicus or homo faber, the protagonists of grand narratives who legitimize the doctrine of technological and economic progress, industrial civilization, civic society,
56 See E. Goffmann, Człowiek w teatrze życia codziennego, trans. H. Datner-Śpiewak, P. Śpiewak, Warszawa 2000; A. Elliott, Koncepcje “ja”, trans. S. Królak, Warszawa 2007.
46 | Tadeusz Różewicz’s Narratives and Modern Identity (an Introduction)
and human rights, but also the 20th-century’s revolutionary changes in political systems, are not central characters of Różewicz’s work. Still, un-der different guises and in different periods, they do appear in his prose.
They have not been granted a separate chapter either, but I did acknowl-edge their presence in my discussions of Polish consumerist imagination, urban semiosphere, and post-war ideological persuasion.
One of the focal points of this book is the Western-orientation of Polish collective identity in the 20th century connected, on the one hand, with the civilizational modernization of Central Europe and the post-war
“Iron Curtain” division of the continent that was conducive to Poland’s phantom-like idea of the West, and on the other, with the post-war bor-der shift resulting in Poland’s annexation of the lands along the Obor-der river and the Baltic coast, the Polonization of formerly German territo-ries and the historical and political discourse justifying the incorporation.
As a travelling writer and journalist, Tadeusz Różewicz would frequently problematize the relation between the real Europe and its Polish image and, as a resident of Gliwice and Wrocław, he not only described (ever since the time of his river trip from Koźle to Szczecin on an Odra barge in 1947) the symbolic colonization of the “post-German” Odra Valley, but also diagnosed artistically the birth of a new individual and collective identity of those border regions, noticing the conflicting local narratives of history, biography, and national literature as well as the palimpsest-like traces of various cultures and memories.
There is no doubt that besides the aforementioned social identity of the individual, Różewicz’s prose contains a number of suggestions and mental tropes which will force the careful reader to confront the issue of the “aporetic” or even “incommunicable” character of parts of the modern experience for which there is no logically consistent explanation.
Though remembering this, I attempt to minimize the areas of the “apo-retic” and the “incommunicable” in Różewicz’s texts, subjecting them to
The Model and Aims of Description | 47
interpretation instead, trying to describe them in my own way but defi-nitely without omitting, let alone falsifying, anything. Still, acknowledg-ing the existence of such areas, I have marked the cognitive boundaries of my argument, circumscribed as it is by the selected model of description which I thus verify.
The logic of classification has it that objects grouped within the same subset should be maximally similar to each other, elements belonging to different subsets should be maximally dissimilar, the sum of the sub-sets must correspond to the total of the set, and the division criterion is to be one unchanging principle. Consistent adherence to these rules is impossible with such ambiguous, complex and mutually interconnected cultural phenomena as identity narratives. This is all the more so because Różewicz, as the author of their textual form, while not abandoning the recurrent themes of his work, constantly changes and develops liter-ary versions of them. For practical reasons, therefore, chapters that are situated close together in this book describe identity narratives that are similar in their problematics, whereas those that are further apart present narratives that are dissimilar, though also related. Thus, what links “The Adventures of an Ideologist” to “Culture, Memory, and Community”
are ideological, symbolic, and social motivations behind identity rooted in post-war history, but also in 19th- and early 20th-century traditions.
“I, the Reader”, in turn, complements the concept of culture as a com-munication community, tracing also the evolution of modern changes in human expression in cultural space. Notably, “I, the Reader” introduces
“I, the Reader”, in turn, complements the concept of culture as a com-munication community, tracing also the evolution of modern changes in human expression in cultural space. Notably, “I, the Reader” introduces