Agata Szulc-Woźniak
Konteksty Kultury, Volume 14 Issue 3, 2017, pp. 305-315
https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.17.020.7913Agata Szulc-Woźniak
Konteksty Kultury, Volume 18 Issue 2, 2021, pp. 209-231
https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.21.015.13693The present article is a preliminary analysis of Joanna Pollakówna’s poems addressed to her mother, Wanda Grodzieńska, and written shortly before and right after her death. In these works, I search for the expressions of the daughter-mother connection and discuss a specifically female way of grieving. I argue that despite being written from a hopeful perspective (motifs associated with Easter), despite intuitively referring to the concept of biological continuity (plant-related motifs), despite displaying the use of tricks, cyphers, and rebellious attempts to break the rules governing time and space, the pieces which Pollakówna addresses to her deceased mother constantly return to the feeling of loss. Acceptance of the fact that the woman who birthed her is gone is made impossible by the physical and spiritual intimacy of the women, most clearly expressed in dreams and still very vivid visions. Loss becomes inscribed in the body: the daughter continues to experience it with the same intensity. The death which she “embraces within herself” is always present. This obliges the poet to take over the mother’s legacy, to inherit her traumas.