Jaroslaw Anders
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300111675
- eISBN:
- 9780300155310
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300111675.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Twentieth-century Polish literature is often said to be a “witness to history,” a narrative of the historical and political disasters that visited the nation. This book examines Poland's modern ...
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Twentieth-century Polish literature is often said to be a “witness to history,” a narrative of the historical and political disasters that visited the nation. This book examines Poland's modern poetry and fiction and explains that the best Polish writing of the period 1918–89 was much more than testimony. Rather, it constantly transformed historical experience into metaphysical reflection, a philosophical or religious exploration of human existence. The book analyzes and contextualizes the work of nine modern Polish writers. These include the “three madmen” of the interwar period—Schulz, Gombrowicz, and Witkiewicz, whom he calls the fathers of Polish modernist prose; the great poets of the war generation—Milosz, Herbert, and Szymborska; Herling-Grudzinski and Konwicki, with their dark philosophical subtexts; and the mystical-ecstatic poet Zagajewski.Less
Twentieth-century Polish literature is often said to be a “witness to history,” a narrative of the historical and political disasters that visited the nation. This book examines Poland's modern poetry and fiction and explains that the best Polish writing of the period 1918–89 was much more than testimony. Rather, it constantly transformed historical experience into metaphysical reflection, a philosophical or religious exploration of human existence. The book analyzes and contextualizes the work of nine modern Polish writers. These include the “three madmen” of the interwar period—Schulz, Gombrowicz, and Witkiewicz, whom he calls the fathers of Polish modernist prose; the great poets of the war generation—Milosz, Herbert, and Szymborska; Herling-Grudzinski and Konwicki, with their dark philosophical subtexts; and the mystical-ecstatic poet Zagajewski.
