This book explores the theme of death in Polish literature, beginning with the poetry of Jozef Czechowicz and concluding with "Dom dzienny, dom nocny / Day House and Night House" by Olga Tokarczuk.
Przemyslaw Czaplinski, an eminent Polish critic and expert reviewer of prose, has written a book that differs significantly from his other critical works. It explores the theme of death in Polish literature, beginning with the poetry of Jozef Czechowicz and concluding with Dom dzienny, dom nocny / Day House and Night House by Olga Tokarczuk. Between the two, Czaplinski discusses phenomena as varied as the poetry of Stanislaw Grochowiak and Zbigniew Herbert, the social realist prose of Kazimierz Brandys and the initiation novels of Tadeusz Konwicki, Stanislaw Lem's Katar / The Chain of Chance, Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski's short stories and the prose of the 1990s. The book arouses the reader's admiration not only for the range of the author's methods of analysis as he uses different keys to unlock the secrets of the various texts, but also for the precision and inquisitiveness of his interpretations, which allow us to discover what is most significant about the writers and their epochs through the motif of death. (Jerzy Jarzebski)
- Przemysław Czapliński
Small Dialogues with Death / Mikrologi ze śmiercią
Biblioteka Literacka Poznańskich Studiów Polonistycznych, Poznan 2001
© Przemysław Czapliński, rights available
144 x 205, 220 pages, paperback
ISBN 83-88176-11-0