Odessa w artystycznej wizji Jarosława Iwaszkiewicza

Abstract

The aim of the article is to present the vision of Odessa in the works of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. The Polish poet was born in Ukraine and he spent there over twenty years of his life. He visited many Ukrainian cities. In Odessa he spent only a few days, but this short stay brought rich artistic results in the prose of Iwaszkiewicz. Odessa appears in several stories by the writer (The Teacher, Voci di Roma). But the most important role in the works of Iwaszkiewicz is played by Odessa in the novel Glory and Vainglory. This book is an epic tale of life in the first half of the 20th century. Iwaszkiewicz pays special attention to the socio-political changes in Central and Eastern Europe. He reconstructs the process of transformation from World War I through times of great Stalinist terror until the Second World War. Iwaszkiewicz reconstructed images of Odessa from autumn 1918 (when he saw the city), but also tried to evoke the finer past of the Black Sea city before World War I. The author of Glory and Vainglory registered successive stages of the progressive degradation of Odessa in the era of the Russian revolutions (The February Revolution, The October Revolution) and the civil war. Finally, he created a description of the city in a state of spiritual agony in the great Stalinist terror. In the evocative description of Odessa of the Stalinist years one can find an unusual diagnosis of the totalitarian world.