TY - JOUR TI - You Gave – I Lost. On Guilt and Melancholy in Poetry of Tadeusz Nowak AU - Łopata, Magdalena TI - You Gave – I Lost. On Guilt and Melancholy in Poetry of Tadeusz Nowak AB - The article is an interpretative text focusing on the poem Jak się przed tobą wytłumaczę [How Will I Explain Myself to You] from the 1956 volume Prorocy już odchodzą [The Prophets are Leaving Already]. The deliberations come directly from the text of the poem and focus on questions such as the reversal of the topos of the  Prodigal Son, melancholy, “the traitor’s complex” (Stanisław Balbus’s term) as a generational and “class” experience, and last but not least, the relation of the poem to the whole volume and to later poetry of Tadeusz Nowak. On the formal level, some difficulties connected with the poem’s intended reader, which cause some imbalance of the lyrical form, are discussed, as well as the peculiar rhyme structure which allows the reader to “decipher” hidden key words. VL - 2016 IS - Volume 13, Issue 4 PY - 2017 SN - 2083-7658 C1 - 2353-1991 SP - 360 EP - 371 DO - 10.4467/23531991KK.16.020.6759 UR - https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/konteksty-kultury/article/dales-gubilem-o-winie-i-melancholii-w-poezji-tadeusza-nowaka KW - Tadeusz Nowak KW - Prodigal Son KW - treachery KW - loss KW - community KW - guilt