Tomasz Mirkowicz, tłumacz Roku 1984 George’a Orwella, i jego opowiadanie pt. Tunel

Abstract

The article is aiming at presenting the profile of Tomasz Mirkowicz (1953-2003), an outstanding translator (among others, of K. Kesey, H. Matthews, G. Orwell) and, as it was universally believed, a “sophisticated” writer and literary critic. The author concentrates on the debut short story by Mirkowicz The Tunnel, published in 1984 un der the pen name Tomasz Minon in an underground Independent Publishing House NOWA (Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza NOWA). The story, pretending to be a coverage of a strike initiated on December 13, 1981 in an unnamed coal mine in Silesia, written in the tradition of utopian fiction and science-fiction, was to inspire the potential reader to undertake to work underground for years to come. However, the attempt to depict the truth of the Poles-against-Poles war in The Tunnel failed, exposing the author’s helplessness against the political and social reality of the time. Although the short story did not become a “stunning allegory” nor a universal parable, it heralded the future form typical of the later texts by Mirkowicz (as Geography Lesson [Lekcja geografii], Lipograms [Lipogramy], novel The Pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Egypt [Pielgrzymka do Ziemi Świętej Egiptu]), built in a pattern characteristic of postmodernism. Thanks to the information collected in the Institute of National Remembrance and the censorship archive (Archiwum Akt Nowych) the author of the article was able to provide new facts from Mirkowicz’s biography and about the circumstances of his translation work.