In the essay “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality”, Hayden White, considering the epistemological status of historical narrative, distinguishes between the annual, the chronicle, and other, more explicitly historical types of writing. He indicates that the condition for the latter is the emergence of a social entity that can occupy both subjective and objective modes of history (both of these aspects being contained within the German word Geschichte). Such an entity, assuming responsibility for its own history, is authorized to narrate the events of its own existence. White believes that this narration takes on one of the forms of presentation available within the culture in question. This paper calls into question White’s constructivist thesis, drawing attention to trauma as a key aspect of the formation of narrative as such. Trauma is a “blind spot” around which narrative arises, with the trauma itself unable to be narrativized. Trauma dates from the prehistory of the subject (individual or collective) and reminds us that, although the trauma may seem to be an isolated phenomenon, it has a cause outside itself. The article supplements this criticism with a commentary on Man of Iron, a film depicting the striving of a society for autonomy in the telling of their own stories; these narratives are characterized by a certain excess indicative of the magnitude of the trauma.

The aim of the article is to answer to the question of how best to commemorate the Holocaust in the post-memory era. One possible answer is to create temporary post-monuments which require engagement only from viewers who want and need it. The post-monument relates to cultural, social, and also individual memory. It commemorates forgotten places and individual experiences, encouraging dialogue among viewers. Engaging viewers and inviting them to reconstruct history is one way that the trauma of past generations can be commemorated by contemporary generations. In order for history to remain vibrant, and its message to have a performative function, its memory must live on through successive generations. The temporary nature of the post-monument allows it not only to commemorate, but also to thematize the process of memory erasure over time. In the article, the above observations are presented in reference to the theory of memory, the philosophy of postmodernism, the idea of homo holocaustus, in order to compare the post-monument to more traditional forms of commemoration alongside selected examples of post-monuments.

This article is an attempt to interpret the final scene of The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (in which Concetta buries the remains of a decomposing stuffed dog) and to present an analysis of the motif of hope chests. Tracing Freudian anachronisms in the novel’s narration, the author proves that Concetta’s never-opened hope chests are a sign of her “mummified” memories of erotic unfulfillment. The decayed dowry kept in the chests is an image of “memory traces” (Freud) which harm the unmarried woman, turning her life into a “hell of memories.”

The article Bohumil Hrabal’s “Who I Am,” or the Question of Identity in the Very Heart of Europe, is an attempt to place Hrabal’s work in the autobiographical current of his prose. At the same time, it is a deconstruction of the writer’s biographical legend by renaming and defining the linguistic procedures and metaphors used by the writer. The main subject matter of the article revolves around the problem of melancholy, the causes of which lie in the writer’s experiences and personality, as well as in the external socio-political context characteristic of Central Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. The entire discussion is illuminated by the philosophy of Karl Jaspers.

This article is an interpretation of the work of art entitled Revision – Arrest, painted in 1953. The first part of the text describes research on trauma and class of narrative related to it. Next, the text discusses the influence of the experience of war – and the death of his father – on the development of Wróblewski’s subsequent decisions regarding art, life, and aesthetics. The analysis connects the study of individual aspects of the image with the war-visions of the artist, with the goal of identifying points of correspondence between history and the work.

This article considers literary features that are characteristic of the (post)memorial prose written by members of the so-called “second generation” after Shoah: in other words, children of Holocaust Survivors, who grew up within spaces delineated by family memories that were strongly tabooed. Based on the example of the autobiographical text A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz, by Göran Rosenberg, the article discusses how narration representing traumatic memories disturbs narration tied to narrative (normative) memories. Drawing on terms from trauma and memory studies, the article proposes that such novels be read as medical epicrises, each containing a range of symptoms, diagnoses, and specific therapeutic processes. This article specifically examines the so-called identity dissociation of the author/narrator, following the condition’s development over the course of the text. Simultaneously, and aided by references to urban studies terminology, the article hypothesizes a process of the reconstruction of a childhood world from a grown-up perspective.

The aim of this paper is to compare and analyse two depictions of the experience of childhood, as well as the portrayal of the characters and events contained within two works: Od Karpat nad Bałtyk, written in 1946 by Aniela Gruszecka, and Dzieci wśród nocy, written in 1948 by Irena Krzywicka. Each of the novels depicts children’s wartime experiences, with particular significance being conferred upon contrasting portrayals of the experiences of German and Jewish children. The authors have successfully captured the destruction of the children’s worlds in two novels that are well worth remembering and contemplating.

The topic of the article is the nature of memory and remembrance in the work of Janina Kościałkowska, a literary artist associated with the Second Emigration, winner of Wiadomości award, and author of stories, plays, and novels. The topics under discussion in this paper are closely connected with the concepts of homeland, locality, and identity. Revisiting the past primarily speaks to the need for self-determination. These issues constitute an important element in Kościałkowska’s works, and embody various forms of literary interpretation while attempting to come to terms with the history and canonical perception of emigration.

Svetlana Alexievich’s Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future is a collection of narratives created after the catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The paper presents the posttraumatic reality as an inexpressible experience that cannot be explained or described. However, the inability to represent traumatic experience does not mean falling into silence. Instead, it rouses the imagination. Interviews with victims of the catastrophe carried out by the author confirm the existence of a specific, collective “imaginarium” of the conceptual realm, where the process of fantasizing actuates discourse, both metaphysical-apocalyptic and other, and also evokes the aestheticization of the disaster, as well as irony. The emergence of different languages reflects the possible ways of perceiving posttraumatic reality and creating postcatastrophic discourse. The catastrophe, which creates a threat – and simultaneously, an attraction, an unreal object of desire – is terrifying and at the same time ridiculous.

This article provides critical context for, and an analysis of, Sebastian Porzuczek’s The Mapping of Pain: Reading – Gaze – Affect (Mapowanie bólu. Lektura – spojrzenie – afekt). Porzuczek’s study is an literary-anthropological project that aims to characterize the cultural conceptualization of pain in modernity – and, to a lesser extent, in postmodernity – through interpretations of mainly-European literary and film works. This article analyses The Mapping of Pain against a backdrop of earlier Polish research in the humanities. The reading of this book inspires further questions connected with Cartesian dualism, the ethical implications of the distinction between pain and suffering, and also the influences of the COVID-19 pandemic (bringing forth the concept of the viral epidemic from the margins of the attention of the postmodern world) upon today’s society.

Anita Jarzyna’s essays, collected in the book Post-koiné. Studia o nieantropocentrycznych językach (poetyckich) (Post-Koiné. Studies on Non-Anthropocentric (Poetic) Languages), contribute to the flourishing field of animal studies. Her work develops a coherent theory of the reading of poetry using the latest methodologies. Jarzyna’s main argument, developed through a microscopic analysis of the the poems of several dozen poets, is for the necessity of the intentional reconfiguration of well-worn expressions and the re-evaluation of tropes. The reason for this is, as Donna Haraway argues, that such linguistic constructions and tropes are the reason the language “deviates from the correct path and takes a turn”. This remark applies not only to the works of Joanna Mueller and Justyna Bargielska, which intercept and neutralise derogatory language related to hunting (pomiot, pokot), but also to poets deconstructing oxymorons functioning in the Polish language (as in the case of Ryszard Krynicki), as well as allusively referring to canonical formulas (Adorno) which are of importance in the period (for example, in the poems of The Lives of Birds and Mammals, Kronhold). This is not the only strategy Jarzyna decides to pursue. She also outlines a complementary account of the animal biography (for example, Laika the dog, one of the first animals in space), the publicizing of which is part of Éric Baratay’s project of extending human history to non-human actors. The French historian postulates that the animal cannot remain a blank spot in history; a methodology for reading documents and testimonies must be developed in order to allow the reconstruction of the life path of animals. In the light of new research, the agency of animals is unquestionable, a narrative that Jarzyna also builds upon. This project criticizes many stereotypes and announces the development of a new way of speaking and thinking about writing. The first step in revising the old order is to revolutionize language by purifying it of animal-related curse words and other linguistic constructions that harm animals. In the eyes of this reviewer, Jarzyna’s monograph stands out from other publications in terms of the construction of the argument and its central
premises, which go beyond the cautious style of many academic books.