This paper discusses select problems of the creative process in the prose of Tadeusz Różewicz through the analysis of corrections, notes, and graphic forms found in the writer’s archives that are stored in the National Ossoliński Institute. On the basis of his “graphical writings,” which include mainly handwritten texts and griffonages, the author of this paper traces the history of transformations of such literary projects as “reconstruction attempts,” unrealized novelistic plans and “pages from a journal.” The main conclusions resulting from the description of Różewicz’s workshop concern the writer’s attitude to his own work, subjectivity in the text, and autobiographical plans.

This paper attempts to reconstruct the pre-history of Tadeusz Różewicz’s 2003 poem biedny poeta Stachura, which depicts the meeting of both poets in an unspecified past. Scattered proto-texts, documents-prefigurations that precede the actual creative process, lead the researcher to the sabbatical retreat in Krynica, where in the winter of 1973 (thirty years earlier) the actual meeting could have taken place. Różewicz and Stachura epitomize two different generational experiences, two different writing practices and poetics. Nonetheless, the author of Wszystko jest poezja, though he started from a completely dissimilar point, arrived at forms close to those found in the work of the author of Nic w płaszczu Prospera – through contrast and a kind of doppelgänger complementarity. This is the theme recurring in Różewicz’s work of confronting the “other,” who is embodied through memories, dreams, and phantasms.

The article takes up the issue of the author’s presence in the poem “czego byłoby żal” and its proto-texts, which enter into various relationships and filiations, creating the subsequent stages of the writing process. These relationships are considered from the perspective of genetic criticism and are situated within the framework of critical reflection on the processual nature of creating a literary work (écriture). The subsequent stages of the analyzed writing process reveal the author’s complex presence both on the level of text-creating activities and in biographical dimensions.

This article is focused on the interpretation of the changes made by Tadeusz Różewicz to the cover of a single Twarz trzecia poetry volume. The volume – offered to Jerzy Kwiatkowski and bearing an extensive dedication – contains changes and corrections introduced by the poet in individual works, which will also be analyzed. The main aim of the research will be both the analysis of the revealed creative process and the interpretation of the author’s lack of acceptance for the paratext of the finished work.

This paper is a study of Tadeusz Różewicz’s text-creating activities, as evidenced by a handwritten page (currently held in the Ossolineum archives in Wrocław) dated by the poet June 13, 1968. The subject of the analysis is the process of building the poem “Twarz,” which was published, in a slightly changed form, as “Koniec” in the volume Regio (1969). Notes on the margins of the main text, present in three versions, open up historical and personal contexts related to the Holocaust, the anti-Semitic campaign of the state authorities of the Polish People’s Republic in March 1968, and to the May 68 revolt in Paris.

This comparative sketch juxtaposes the late narrative poem nożyk profesora by Tadeusz Różewicz with W.G. Sebald’s last work, the novel Austerlitz from the same year, in the context of literary hauntology. Both works return to the issue of the Holocaust after more than half a century and take up the question of the relationship of the living (survivors or those born after the war) with the dead; a relationship which being both necessary and impossible inspires the idea of literature as facilitating the “meeting with the dead.” Both works are also deeply critical of the modern civilization, the inevitable consequence of which were the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century.

This paper is directly inspired by the publication of the book Braterstwo poezji, which is a collection of correspondence, poems, conversations and discursive texts documenting the long-term dialogue of two outstanding Polish poets: Czesław Miłosz and Tadeusz Różewicz. In the article I refer to three issues: the Paris meeting of the two poets in 1957, the circumstances and form of the poetic welcome extended by Miłosz to Różewicz through the poem “Do Tadeusza Różewicza, poety,” and the accusations of nihilism stubbornly leveled by the author of Ocalenie against the younger poet. By means of these three examples, i try to show that the metaphor of spiritual brotherhood advanced in the title of the volume and in the introductory essay by Andrzej Franaszek does not reflect the complexity and ambivalence inherent in the poets’ relationship, especially of Miłosz’s distant and reserved attitude to the worldview and poetic philosophy of Różewicz.

The subject of reflection in this paper is the epistolary dialogue between Czesław Miłosz and Tadeusz Różewicz about their writings. It is expressed not only in direct opinions and evaluations of individual works, but also in the preliminary, later modified versions of poems that are found in the letters, all of which allows us to look at the relationship of the two poets from a slightly different perspective. Miłosz, who in the era of Socialist Realism played the role of mentor to Różewicz, over time transforms into his insightful reader and polemicist. Różewicz matures from his role as a student, gradually turning into an equal partner. Both emphasize in their friendly and long-lasting epistolary dialogue the similarities and differences in their worldviews and their poetic practices. Of particular importance in this respect are Miłosz’s poems – “Różewicz” and “Unde malum,” and Różewicz’s – “Myrmekologia (dalszy ciąg bajki o Guciu zaczarowanym)” and “Zaćmienie światła.” While Miłosz remains the poet of antinomy, Różewicz seems to be the poet of paradox.

This paper discusses certain motifs present in the correspondence between Ewa Kierska and Tadeusz Różewicz. The focus is particularly on the designs for the poet’s portrait, on the physical aspects of dealing with art, and the reflection on the power and helplessness of words.