cuss them at length in subsequent chapters. Meanwhile, suffice it to say that, given the modernizing, emancipatory, and educational aspects of mo-dernity’s agenda, other influential factors included the decline of book and magazine readership, probably resulting from the expansion of television;
the halt of the sexual revolution process; and the collapse of technocratic modernization during Edward Gierek’s decade – accelerated by, among other things, the global economic and oil crisis. The end of the decade witnessed also the curbing of social mobility and mass migration from the countryside to the cities, which was particularly intense in Communist Po-land and eventually stopped by the country’s acute economic crisis. These local phenomena were accompanied by global changes such as, Pierre Nora tells us, the decline of revolutionary ideology as a result of Marxism’s intel-lectual defeat in Europe, the ultimate disgrace of the Soviet Union in inter-national politics, and the apathy of Western Communist parties.39 Gilles Kepel calls this period “the crisis of modernity”, one that – though build-ing for decades – began to prompt large numbers of people to action only when combined with economic problems.40
Różewicz’s Narratives
The model of identity proposed by the narrativists can be applied to the research of not only narrative texts. After all, identity narratives also appear in such texts – i.e. they can materialize through such forms – as a historical treatise, a political manifesto, a film, or an oral tale. They can also be discovered in poetry and drama. I believe, though, that in
39 P. Nora, Czas pamięci, trans. W. Dłuski, “Res Publica Nova” 2010, no. 10, pp. 135–136.
40 “Due to the crisis of the 1970s the solidarity mechanisms of the welfare state had stalled, gen-erating unprecedented human fears and poverty. The crisis exposed the hollowness of secular utopias – liberal and Marxist – manifesting themselves in the consumerist egoism of the West or in the repressive administration of poverty in dehumanized societies of socialist and Third World countries.” G. Kempel, Zemsta Boga. Religijna rekonkwista świata, trans. A. Adamczak, Warszawa 2010, p. 37.
30 | Tadeusz Różewicz’s Narratives and Modern Identity (an Introduction)
Różewicz’s work it is narrative texts that best exemplify the concept and criteria of identity narrative. That this is the case is not only due to the fact that, of all the literary genres and forms practised by the Wrocław writer, it is his prose that seems the most diverse – stylistically and ge-nealogically varied, intertextual, miscellaneous, sketchy, formally open, metaliterary and discursive as it is, consistently intertwining fictional and reflexive aspects,41 and thus best fulfils the requirement that identity nar-rative should be an articulation of the self’s experience in dialogic ex-change with the works and utterances of others, such as historical reports, memoirs, behavioural models and images of humanity in culture. If the only selection criterion was the “impurity” of literary form,42 some of Różewicz’s plays and poems would also qualify. Besides, identity narra-tive is supposed to facilitate a holistic and sequential (temporally ordered) self-definition on the self’s part with the assistance of such categories as agent, life plan, aim and cause of action, intention and rationale, at-titude to one’s past words and deeds, to one’s self-descriptions within the frameworks of geographical space and social and material reality.43
41 That is how S. Burkot characterizes Różewicz’s short fiction in his Tadeusz Różewicz, Warszawa 1987, p. 125.
42 “Impure forms” is a term coined by Tomasz Burek. See his Nieczyste formy Różewicza,
“Twórczość” 1974, no. 7. In the same year Kazimierz Wyka, discussing Różewicz’s prose, wrote about “genealogically mixed records”. K. Wyka, Różewicza droga do prozy, “Odra” 1974, no. 5, p. 58.
43 Jerzy Trzebiński, claiming that one’s knowledge – including that of one’s own self and group – is organized “in terms of actor, goals, and the conditions and means of achieving the goal,” writes that “various data attest to the functional grounding of natural mental processes in the structure of a particular, currently materializing action. Man does not experience world objects as beings
‘in themselves’ but – first and foremost – as elements and prerequisites of the particular action or event that s/he participates in or observes.” The individual’s experience (knowledge) structurally reflects those events. What is more, the process of their understanding is invariably connected with defining the motivation and subjecting to value judgements the behaviour of the events’
participants. Thus one may assume that the adequate model of socially constructed identity is the narrative scheme. J. Trzebiński, Narracyjne formy wiedzy potocznej, Poznań 1992, pp. 26, 84–92, 102–104.
Różewicz’s Narratives | 31
Although various works of culture and varieties of literature might serve as articulators of modern identity, it is the “impure” prose that can best illustrate the process, as it not only imposes a narrative form onto one’s
“self-images” but also complements their meanings with moral, philo-sophical, biographical, or metaliterary reflection.
In my analysis of specific premises of modern identity in the fol-lowing chapters, I attempt to demonstrate that Tadeusz Różewicz’s prose provides extensive, interesting, and varied material that matches its defi-nition. Still, whenever necessary, I also refer to Różewicz’s drama and po-etry, especially some of his longer poems published after 1989. His most important works, however, were written in the three decades following his book debut – a collection of novellas, notes, and comic vignettes from his partisan days titled Echa leśne (Forest Echoes), printed on a duplicat-ing machine in 1944. Though I focus mainly on that period, I do not skip over the newer texts – those, for example, from the collections Nasz starszy brat [Our Elder Brother] and Mother Departs , published in the last decade of the 20th century (but in some cases written earlier) – because the phenomena typical of modernity’s transition to its late phase lasted several decades in Polish culture, indeed until the 1990s. Most of the fictional texts I discuss were published in three Utwory zebrane [Collected Works] collections of fiction in 2003 and 2004 (some of them also in the poetry and drama volumes of the Collected Works), in the collection of reportage titled Kartki z Węgier [Notes from Hungary] (1953), and in the collection of newspaper columns, letters, and notes – mostly from the 1960s and 1970s – called Margines, ale … [Marginal, but …] (2010).
I also cite the volumes Uśmiechy [Smiles] and Opadły liście z drzew [The Leaves Have Fallen from the Trees] (1955), which comprise texts that are not included in the Collected Works or revised, and also some texts that only appeared in the national press, magazines, or anthologies. By way of auxiliary (contextual) material, I also make use of the interviews with
32 | Tadeusz Różewicz’s Narratives and Modern Identity (an Introduction)
the author which found their way into the book Wbrew sobie. Rozmowy z Tadeuszem Różewiczem [Despite Oneself. Conversations with Tadeusz Różewicz] (2011) as well as Różewicz’s letters to Zofia and Jerzy Nowo-sielski from the Korespondencja volume [Letters] (2009).
Even a cursory glance at the list of book-length studies on Różewicz shows that the least researched part of his work is his prose.44 His nar-rative output, however, is extensive and relevant enough to warrant a monograph study. Tadeusz Różewicz published hundreds of short stories, novellas, essays, reportages, columns, notes, journal fragments, letters, and memoirs, clearly refuting the opinion that prose was mar-ginal for his oeuvre (W 64).45 It is, of course, neither the sheer numbers
44 The only, to date, general and comprehensive study of Różewicz’s prose (though omitting some of his reportages, newspaper columns, travel sketches, letters and public statements) is Janusz Waligóra’s book Proza Tadeusza Różewicza [Tadeusz Różewicz’s Prose], Kraków 2006. The au-thors of book-length studies on the selected prose by Różewicz include, among others, Tadeusz Drewnowski, Wiesław Kot, Aniela Kowalska, Eugenia Łoch, Jacek Łukasiewicz, Zbigniew Ma-jchrowski, Jan Potkański, Andrzej Skrendo, Dariusz Szczukowski, Henryk Vogler, Kazimierz Wyka.
45 It was Stanisław Burkot who deemed Różewicz’s prose “marginal for his main work” (S. Burkot, op. cit., p. 126), while Leszek Bugajski stated that the writer “viewed his own prose works in utilitarian rather than purely artistic terms” (L. Bugajski, W świecie prozy Tadeusza Różewicza, in: Świat integralny. Pół wieku twórczości Tadeusza Różewicza, ed. M. Kisiel, Katowice 1994, p. 108). Although the artistry of Różewicz’s prose is not the focus of my work I will briefly comment on it. I believe that the prose of the author of Uśmiechy is interesting in literary terms, often superb, though because of its stylistic and generic diversity it is hardly possible to evalu-ate the writer’s entire narrative oeuvre using a single criterion. Similarly, it makes little sense to reduce the diverse sources of his prose works’ literary value to comparisons with his poetry or drama. The artistry of Różewicz’s narratives is complicated business, so I shall restrict myself to outlining the connections with modern identity. His short stories and novellas would be far less credible as portrayals of 20th-century man if their author had not mastered the art of generating and controlling the tension between the imagery and the protagonist’s insights, the pace of ac-tion in modern civilizaac-tion and the rhythm of the Everyman’s interior monologue, the realistic descriptions and the vision of the future or a dream vision; his artistic prose works as well as his essays, apart from their rich intellectual offer, represent – as Henryk Elzenberg put it – first and foremost the validity of thought as an act and as a lively discussion with other authors built, however, on the carefully crafted composition of their utterances and the author’s commentary.
The artistry of Różewicz’s biographical sketches, newspaper columns, and the fragments of his
Różewicz’s Narratives | 33
nor the author’s opinion that make these narratives so highly relevant to the Różewicz scholar; it is their artistic, intellectual, and documentary value. Some of them – e.g. Przygotowanie do wieczoru autorskiego [Prepa-rations for an Author’s Night] – are among Różewicz’s best works. His prose was appreciated early enough –for a variety of reasons – by Kazi-mierz Wyka, Julian Przyboś, Michał Głowiński, Jan Brzękowski, Czesław Niedzielski, and, more recently, Tomasz Burek.46 Viewed in its entirety, Różewicz’s prose constitutes, in my opinion, an interesting theoretical problem, located at the junction of modern identity narratives, (auto)
journal is an altogether different thing as the texts in question feature an encounter between fic-tion and experience arranged in such a way as to make the identity of the text’s central character not only the image of a specific individual but also the mediating environment for the com-plex liaisons between literature (fiction), biography, and history as paradigmatic narratives, with Różewicz’s prose remaining in a tangential relation to all of them, refusing to be incorporated into any single set of rules, being like “live matter in search of form” (J. Drzewucki).
46 Kazimierz Wyka, in his sketch Na linii Śląska [On the Silesia Line], wrote appreciatively about Różewicz’s journalistic trip to the “Reclaimed Territories”. K. Wyka, Na linii Śląska, “Dziennik Literacki” (addendum to “Dziennik Polski”) 1947, no. 4, p. 1. In 1974, in turn, discussing Różewicz’s prose in its entirety, the critic emphasized its unique, subjective realism. “Filtered through the stream of his [Różewicz’s] most personal consciousness, filtered through the masks, anonymous texts, through depersonalized intermediaries and substitutes, it is soaks into reality itself.” K. Wyka, Różewicza droga do prozy, op. cit., pp. 51–61. On the story Ni pies, ni wydra [Neither Fish Nor Flesh], J. Przyboś wrote in his letter to Różewicz of 22 December 1953: “You have already left the generically frivolous forms behind and started the real thing, going the whole literary hog prosewise. And you are taking the real, that is ultra-realistic, bull by the horns, one that has been just let out of the pen, unknown, discovered by you alone!” (Ma 142). M. Głowiński, in his review of the volume Opadły liście z drzew, concludes that, as far as literary conventions go, “Różewicz’s prose is very rich”, dynamic and simultaneously subtle in its contemplative aspect. M. Głowiński, Proza Różewicza, “Życie Literackie” 1956, no. 1, p. 3.
“A few weeks ago I came across Przerwany egzamin. As for the book, I appreciate your prose, it is as genuinely yours as your poetry”, wrote J. Brzękowski in his letter to Różewicz of 15 May 1961 (Ma 210). C. Niedzielski gave Różewicz credit for consciously liberating prose from high-brow conventions by infusing it with the elements habitually attributed to documentary genres (e.g. reportage). C. Niedzielski, O teoretycznoliterackich tradycjach prozy dokumentarnej (podróż-powieść-reportaż), Toruń 1966, pp. 188–189. T. Burek claims that Różewicz’s prose should not be deemed of lesser importance when compared to his poetry and drama. T. Burek, Niewybac-zalne sentymenty, Warszawa 2011, p. 141.
34 | Tadeusz Różewicz’s Narratives and Modern Identity (an Introduction)
biographical writing and literary texts. His narrative texts are immensely varied in terms of their style, composition, genre, and subject matter.
A theory-bound literary scholar may discover in them some fascinating theoretical and textual issues, whereas scholars reading those texts from an anthropological standpoint come across major problems of 20th -cen-tury culture, individual consciousness, and history of ideas, as well as, first and foremost, modern forms of biographical identity. I deem both cognitive perspectives indispensable and apply them simultaneously.
Różewicz’s narratives constitute a testimony to the epoch, but not only in a documentary sense. Creating a literary image of the post-war period, the writer attempted a “reconstruction” of contemporary man, trying to comprehend his historical experiences, to make sense of them through identity narratives of modern culture and its connections with relevant humanist, political, and artistic traditions. My goal, among others, is to translate the writer’s attempts into the terms and ideas of the narrativist concept of identity.
Any attempt to describe the individual’s identity entails captur-ing the connection between what is collective, historical, and public and what is individual and contingent. Różewicz seems particularly sensitive to this connection. Despite the presence of grand moral, social, and artis-tic themes, his prose remains for the most part an intimate and autobio-graphical narrative, one coming from the narrative persona that seeks its own independence and separateness, consistently claiming his right to be himself and describing his attempts to achieve those goals. On the other hand, however, one can also witness in Różewicz’s prose the disintegration of identity construed as a selfhood project. In some of his texts there are no protagonists or narrators capable of defining themselves “from within”, that is of composing a unique narrative of their own selves in the name of commonly accepted ideas, lifestyles, value systems, role models, or – con-versely – against the grain of ideas and models which are either intrinsically
Różewicz’s Narratives | 35
alien or externally imposed. The individual’s identity in the 20th century is not always a fully autonomous work, as its fundamental experience often boils down to a sense of loss of one’s selfhood under the pressure of histori-cal events, social phenomena, ideologies, or mass culture. As Włodzimierz Maciąg put it, modern man “to some extent recognizes – and to some extent yields to – the incentives and constraints inherent in his personal experience, accepting the prevalent models not so much as a matter of choice but rather of constant adaptation”.47 It follows that the problem of identity in Różewicz’s prose should also be viewed as the individual’s in-ability to retain agency in the world. Like many other 20th-century writers, Różewicz attempted to describe that situation in order to “expose, reveal, depict – all such mechanisms, to highlight all the factors that turn people into dependent, subjugated, conditioned, and contingent beings, to reach the deeply-hidden connections and constraints”.48 It would be erroneous, however, to interpret his work only as an act of rejection and exposure.
Questioning the modern individual’s autonomy in the face of tradition, history, culture, or language, Różewicz does not restrict himself to mere diagnosis. His “conforming” or “self-adapting” protagonist embodies an identity which is hollow – because it is typical and nondescript – and filled with models – because it is extremely impressionable, open to reality and its representations. Nothing can monopolize his loyalties, even though there is a lot that concerns him, defining him partly or temporarily. Though bereft of an identity that would constitute a direct reflection of any single project, this type of protagonist, in most cases, does his own identification work, checking out the accessible ways and models of self-creation, and retreat-ing – in narrative terms – to fundamental experiences. The resultant retreat from ethical systems and grand narratives does not mean giving up on any
47 W. Maciąg, Świadomość bohatera współczesnej prozy, “Odra” 1975, no. 12, pp. 42–43.
48 Ibid., p. 43.
36 | Tadeusz Różewicz’s Narratives and Modern Identity (an Introduction)
of them but presupposes the necessity of turning to the biographical narra-tive in order to test their true value.
From a literary studies perspective, the identity of the persona, narrator, or central character can be seen as a textual phenomenon. In Różewicz’s prose the problems with identification are often explicitly stated, but some important identity problems can also result from the narrative’s form and the communicative relations within the text. The situation of the self in Różewicz’s texts is inscribed into the process of speaking (communicating), but also depends on the strategy of the au-thor’s persona that makes use of pre-existing narratives, cultural motifs, or symbols that come already laden with such problems. It goes without saying that through the narrative’s order and dynamic, its intertextual structure, the characters’ dialogues and monologues, the grammatical tense and gender used, the modality or internal communicative situation – or, in other words, through the code of the narrative world-creation process – the problematic of selfhood, community, and existence can be construed in numerous ways. As a result, the identity narratives in Różewicz’s prose cannot be easily separated from utterances and descrip-tions that do not fall into that category. One of the tasks of this book, therefore, is to describe the narrative techniques remaining at Różewicz’s disposal, the writer approaching them both as a user and critic of modern codes of the individual’s personal and collective identity.
Identity narrative presupposes the existence of the self who either subjects himself/herself to the description or interprets the identity of an-other self – for example, by analysing episodes from memory and history, by assuming numerous narrative roles, or by making use of diverse for-mulas of biographical writing. Although the textual self thus construed has no direct counterpart in real life, it is nevertheless ultimately headed for an identity understood as an individual attempt to make a single
“biography” complete. Many texts by Różewicz fulfil this criterion. One
Różewicz’s Narratives | 37
can identify in his prose, however, ways of speaking in which the author has either recognized or to which he has ascribed – making the most of the writer’s licence, his interpretation of the genre’s rules, or literary communication – the extraordinary ability to express identification prob-lems. Among the narrative conventions thus privileged there are, among others, the personal confession, the account of a vision or a dream, the essayistic monologue, the literary yarn or the portrayal of another writer, the description of a journey or domestic space, family memories, and the textualized reading of a newspaper or a literary work. They best
can identify in his prose, however, ways of speaking in which the author has either recognized or to which he has ascribed – making the most of the writer’s licence, his interpretation of the genre’s rules, or literary communication – the extraordinary ability to express identification prob-lems. Among the narrative conventions thus privileged there are, among others, the personal confession, the account of a vision or a dream, the essayistic monologue, the literary yarn or the portrayal of another writer, the description of a journey or domestic space, family memories, and the textualized reading of a newspaper or a literary work. They best