Dariusz Nowacki

The aim of the article is to present a collection of rural novels written in recent years (2013–2022). The author adopted the expanded category of “prose of rural spaces,” pointing to its advantages and limitations. Then he lists two basic features of the new rural prose: focus on the past and its seriousness. In the main part, the author refers to two concepts mentioned in the title: escapes and returns. He notes that in new Polish prose we are dealing with escapes from the cities to the countryside, never in the opposite direction. He divides the issue of literary returns to the countryside into several problem clusters. In the most general terms, it is described by literary critics as a new wave of rural literature, which was generally associated with the plebeian (folk) turn that took place in Polish culture in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century. Then – on the example of Andrzej Stasiuk’s prose – he discusses the writer’s private returns to their rural childhoods and presents an original literary project, an anthology collecting stories written by members of the Writers’ Union from the Countryside. The next part of the article discusses the problem of a short-term return to the countryside, treated as a “rehabilitation stay.” The article closes with an interpretation and analysis of three works by Andrzej Muszyński, a writer who has been particularly attached to rural issues for a decade now.

The article presents three novels in which the person of Jakub Szela and motif of the Galician slaughter appear. These are Fairy Tale about the Snake’s Heart or Another Word about Jakub Szela (2019) by Radek Rak, Deutsch for Intermediates (2019) by Maciej Hen and Galicians (2016) by Stanisław Aleksander Nowak. The starting point for the considerations is the remark of Stanisław Aleksander Nowak who acknowledged the 1846 peasant revolt as a relevant legacy that could support present-day forms of protest against injustice and exploitation. The author of the article examines if the modern prose writers who brought the person of Jakub Szela back to life in their novels truly invoke the aforementioned tradition and if Szela is a rebel icon and an avenger model for them. The result of said examination is negative: the author proves that only pop-cultural or quasi-pop-cultural presence of Szela (in artistic literature) comes into question, which is loosely tied to the broader discussion on “the peasant question” – the so-called plebeian turn in Polish culture, which became most visible in the years of 2015–2016. The author argues that the discussed works of literature do not have the ambitions to deal with the past; the allegedly renounced or unjustly forgotten legacy of peasant resistance and rebellion weren’t claimed. Thereby the difference between the demands of the historians and sociologists who reflected anew on the situation of serfs in spirit of the so-called pedagogy of shame and today’s literary practice was revealed.