Titles of Dąbrowski’s books usually involve puns, often based on the author’s surname (Te Deum echoes his initials, while Mazurek hints at the title of Polish National Anthem – Dąbrowski’s Mazurka). These wordplays are not made in vain, as the identity of the author, or in fact of the lyrical subject, is crucial to these poems.
Dąbrowski’s lyrical subject usually enters his characteristic role of a child responding to different manifestations of religiosity or of a young man thinking about sexual matters. In either case, these poems are surrounded by an aura of programmatic immaturity. This feature works well with the poet’s rejection of pathos and his focus on everyday issues, and, finally, with the omnipresent irony. Whereas if one searches the Polish literary tradition for models which the Gdańsk-based poet would find positive, Tadeusz Różewicz ought to be mentioned. His influence is especially prominent in Dąbrowski’s early writings.
Every now and then, Tadeusz Dąbrowski is described as a religious poet. His poetry does, in fact, incorporate the notions of sin, heaven, and hell. However, it is not always evident whether they refer to the supernatural sphere, or if they are just references to the language describing the world and one’s deeds which we acquire in childhood. The situation in which that child-like language is employed from the perspective of a twenty-year-old and his life experiences, with the full awareness of the inadequacy of such method of expression, clearly distinguishes Dąbrowski’s oeuvre from the work of his contemporaries. Their approach to religious themes is either distinctly solemn (Wojciech Wencel, Szymon Babuchowski), or purely ironical (Adam Pluszka, Wojciech Brzoska).
This cognitive ambiguity does not go as far, however, so as to affiliate Dąbrowski’s works with postmodernism or postmodernity – as the critics from the Kraków-based magazine Ha!art hinted in 2001-2003. The author’s ideological declarations, scattered in his critical texts, stand in clear opposition to such associations and present Dąbrowski as adhering to the simple, direct poetic articulation and resisting ambiguity and relativism. Indeed, while reading his poems, one may notice that all examples of that which initially transpires as an excessive complication, usually may be boiled down to jokes or ornaments, or otherwise offer an almost immediate conceptual solution. Even if a poem does not directly comment on the author’s beliefs, it still quite strongly refers to them. The poet comments on his creative credo:
As I have already mentioned, there is Something besides the language which can only be honoured with silence. You have eyes, but you cannot see everything, you have the language, but you cannot describe everything. But silence needs to be eloquent, poetic, "being silent about" is an art mastered by few: Mickiewicz, Norwid, Różewicz. And me.
In 2016, Biuro Literackie published Dąbrowski’s first book of prose, Bezbronna Kreska, a metropolitan love story filled with pop cultural and literary references. In it, Dąbrowski combines the low and the high brow, surpassing the classic structure of a novel. The author described his book in an interview:
The protagonist of my novel decided to write a book for rather unsophisticated reasons: he wanted to have the last word in the game, into which – as he suspects – he was drawn by the young architect Megan. So, in a nutshell: revenge! He writes in order to turn his misinvested feelings into paper, fiction. On the other hand, this fiction sometimes has more power over him than reality. When writing, he not only processes his disappointment and pain, but also takes part in a sophisticated and cynical play, an experiment on people, a kind of installation. Or – if you prefer to call it that – in a telenovela.
In 2016, as well as Bezbronna Kreska, Dąbrowski published a book of poetry titled Środek Wyrazu (The Medium of Expression, trans. MD) which complements his novel – a metropolitan flavour mixed with affection and poetry. Piotr Lorkowski described the lyrical ego of the book:
The schoolboy, at times even a man of a certain (middle) age, who addressed the readers in Pomiędzy, was replaced by a scarred man who is likely to become a loser. What makes his age of virility an age of defeat was the breakdown of his marriage. Yet there are few poems overtly approaching the topic, even fewer than those which stem from experiencing a new love. Some of them are unique – they convey a shock that the tragic event appears almost undetected and is not connected to supernatural phenomena. (www.nowelitery.blogspot.com)
Author: Paweł Kozioł, September 2008. Article prepared for the online Anthology of Polish Poetry from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century, designed by Piotr Matywiecki. Update: AP, February 2019.
