The 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.

The article discusses Józef Czapski’s patriotism as reflected in his correspondence. The appropriate context is provided with the use of the artist’s interviews, journal entries, and essays. In Czapski’s case, his deeply internalised sense of Polishness was a conscious and consistently implemented choice, taken despite the fact that many other doors were open to the heir to an aristocratic family with broad European connections. Letters written by Czapski to various people show, on the one hand, a strong emotional bond with Poland, ad­ditionally strengthened by the distance forced by emigration and exile and by the memory of those who gave their lives for the country (Katyn), and on the other hand – almost positivist involvement in the service to the Paris-based “Kultura”, seen as working for the benefit of the homeland.

The article discusses issues connected with monological and virtual aspects of intimate epistolography on the basis of letters written by Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer and Milena Jesenska. It is an example of particularly self-reflexive correspondence which does not supplement but fully replaces direct contact and at the same time serves as the fore­ground of literary activity. The above issues, interpreted among others from the Lacanian perspective with reference to the book by Vincent Kaufmann, lead us to ask the question of whether letters are a particularly “perverse” version of interrupting dialogue in order to listen to the author’s inward voice (as argued by Kaufmann) or rather the model of any kind of communication. The text also points out the radically critical attitude of the writer towards the trust he had earlier put in letters and discusses the “demonic” aspects of correspondence mentioned by Kafka in terms of virtuality/monologicality/mediation and game of projection.

The article discusses Tadeusz Różewicz’s prose from the perspective of “postcards” as a compositional and skill-training format closely connected with the writer’s autobiographical output. The author of the article traces the presence and trans­formations of “postcards” in Różewicz’s fiction and, perhaps most importantly, in his lesser-known works: his journal, travel essays, memoir sketches, and metaliterary pieces.The aim of the article is to demonstrate that “postcards” appeared in Różewicz’s writing throughout his career, from his debut until his mature output, with this conclusion con­firmed even by a brief overview of the writer’s oeuvre. The author seeks to prove that the “postcards” are a complex and consistently applied writing technique which serves, among others, to compose pieces and imbue them with reflections on writing itself. They are also a tool for the author’s self-creation, an intermediary between his texts and the autobiogra­phy (re)constructed therein, a means in which his subjectivity and historical and existential experience become present in his writing.