The Question of Laughter: Reflections on Różewicz

The subject of the article is the problem of laughter and the related phenomena in the work of Tadeusz Różewicz. The problem is considered in a broad theoretical context. The aim of the article is to develop a concept in which two pictures of Różewicz will be reconciled: the poet of trauma as well as the satirist and the comedy writer.

What is Różewicz Laughing about?

An overview of motifs appearing in Tadeusz Różewicz’s poetry such as these of “jester” and “clownery,” “smile,” “laughter” and “mockery” serves as a background for the title reflection, in which the questions of affirmation of someone else’s joy of life; acceptance for ludic laughter; therapeutic role of laughter in face of war trauma; and satirical distance from the observed events come to the forefront. In Różewicz’s oeuvre, a meta-poetic reflexion on the role of laughter in poetry appears from the very beginning as well. The laughter means here the critique or the negation of poetry and the poet; irony and self-mockery – of different type and of different reach that go to the extremes of negative self-topicality. Ridicule of a poem becomes a leitmotif in the late oeuvre of Różewicz as its loudest manifestations are contained in the volume Płaskorzeźba [Bas-relief].

The Conscientious Watching. The Ridiculousness and the Problem of Recognition in Tadeusz Różewicz’s Oeuvre

The article discusses the possibility of employing the definition of humour as “a conscientious watching”(proposed by Bolesław Prus) to encompass the “serious”lyric and the poetic “smiles”of Tadeusz Różewicz. The relation between the ridiculousness and the recognition in his oeuvre is analysed, whereas the “recognition”in literature is to be understood – according to Rita Felski – as a type of affected engagement, perceptive impressions and aesthetically mediated ties. In this context and in accordance with Felski’s suggestion, the methods of “reenacting”the struggles for recognition in Różewicz’s prose as well as poetry were discussed.

A Knife in a Poem – Exponents of Różewicz’s Non-seriousness

The authors analyse the poem by Tadeusz Różewicz, nożyk profesora [professor’s knife] (2001). They deal with the exponents of non-seriousness in this work due to the space of the poem (complicated by the reproduction of the rough draft), the elements of the language of the text, and the resulting gesture of the speaking subject. The non-seriousness becomes a figure of distance that saves from the categorical phraseology, breaks out of the rhythm, as well as of disregard, and is a form of counteracting the destructive power of time shown by the figure of rust. By placing the final text and the draft next to each other, the poet constantly breaks down the arrangements made both by himself and by the characters of the work and by its recipients. Among the verse exponents of the non-seriousness, one can see first of all verse syntagmas with their internal dynamics of additions, which are ultimately not more accurate, and sometimes are funny. With all its internal contradiction, nożyk profesora serves to document the admiration for the described figure of the Professor (Porębski), and also to keep the image of the past, the cruel 20th century, in the memory with the use of the title tool.

Poetics of the Negatives. Tadeusz Różewicz and the Photography

The article Poetics of the Negatives poses a question about the position of photography in creation of the writers’images. Exemplified in the most substantial part by the pictures of Tadeusz Różewicz, taken by a prominent artist photographer Adam Hawałej of Wrocław, published in his two books (Różewicz, Śmietnik [Garbage]), the article aims to reconstruct Różewicz’s attitudes towards the photographic medium. The author of Niepokój [Faces of Anxiety] initially appears as an artist protecting his privacy, at the same time negating the creative measure of photography (in favor of its documentary role). However, as time passed and possibly because of his friendship with several outstanding photographers (A. Hawałej, J. Olek and J. Stankiewicz), his view on photography tended to evolve while the artist himself became not only the subject of numerous exquisite works, but eventually the author of many. The article concludes with an interpretation of the photographic happening captured by Adam Hawałej and published in the book Śmietnik.

(Non-)present Voice. In the Double Archive of Tadeusz Różewicz

The paper focuses on the interpretation mode of the literature, which includes both textual notation as well as its voice realization, and consequently allows to reveal the phenomenon of the double literature archive (writing and voicing). This well-known problem of writing and the voice (e.g. voice in literature, acousmatic voice, voice in the text) is considered in terms of scriptorality. The author’s attention is drawn to the volume of poetry by Tadeusz Różewicz, Wiersze przeczytane [Poems Read] (Wrocław 2014), and especially to the poem “Nowe porównania” [“New comparisons”], which is discussed from the perspective of the modern auditory experience and the consequences of being in the sound in the current reality are shown. The remarks on the presence/absence of the voice (sound) in the literary reading practice, in the situation of understanding literature as a phenomenon of writing and at the same time as a phenomenon of voice, ultimately lead to an attempt of revising traditional literary studies under the conditions of the media society.

People and Things: Beyond Binarism

The article discusses Magdalena Zdrodowska’s book Telefon, kino i cyborgi. Wzajemne relacje niesłyszenia i techniki (Phone, cinema and cyborgs. Interrelations of deafness and technique). Using the posthuman concepts of subjectivity and disability, the author places Zdrodowska’s research within the perspectives of the antropology of things and the critical posthumanism.