Published: 2023-12-13

“Umarli stanęli w moich oczach”: Visual Spectrality in Tadeusz Różewicz’s Poetry

Bartosz Kowalik Logo ORCID
Section: Essays and Articles
https://doi.org/10.31261/SSP.2023.22.03

Abstract

The author of this article attempts to analyse the phenomenon occurring in many of Tadeusz Różewicz’s poems, which consists in a special relationship between vision, imagery and visuality and the appearance (or recurrence) of the dead. This phenomenon is mainly interpreted in relation to Jacques Derrida’s hauntology and Władysław Strzemiński’s Teoria Widzenia and his notion of the after-image. The starting point of the analysis is the reconstruction of Różewicz’s ambivalent position regarding the image-poetry relationship (the poet’s simultaneous emphasis on the primacy of the visual in his imagination and his desire to reject the aesthetic image-metaphor). Through readings of specific works of Różewicz (mainly Wiersz pisany o świcie, Spojrzała w słońce, Światła cienia), the author of the article proves that in the analysed work there is a contamination of perception and remembrance, in which the present is marked by a spectral, indelible trace of the past, and memory is mediated by visuality. He also points to the complex relationship between life and death (light and darkness), as well as the ethical orientation of the phenomenon in question, relating it to Derridean spectral ethics.

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Citation rules

Kowalik, B. (2023). “Umarli stanęli w moich oczach”: Visual Spectrality in Tadeusz Różewicz’s Poetry. Śląskie Studia Polonistyczne [Silesian Journal of Polish Studies], 22(2), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.31261/SSP.2023.22.03

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Vol. 22 No. 2 (2023)
Published: 2024-07-09


ISSN: 2084-0772
eISSN: 2353-0928

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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