Z (i do) wnętrza ziemi. Miłosno-śmiercionośne i wojenne apokalipsy Przybyszewskiego

Abstract

In Przybyszewski’s work, ‘the Earth’ is one of the fundamental ontological and aesthetic categories. It appears again and again in a number of different meanings and contexts – first of all, as the biological and metaphysical source from which the artist grows and draws his creative powers. In this paper, however, we focus mostly on the themes and images where the earth exposes its interior. This happens in three existentially significant situations: love, death, and war. While the first two are closely connected, since the erotic fulfilment is usually a deadly cataclysm (accompanied by the earth thickening and rupturing in convulsions, by lava bursting from the earth entrails, by the drilling into its dark interior, etc.), his representation of war combines biologism and metaphysics. A military cataclysm is an apocalyptic rebellion of the Earth, which can no longer ‘peacefully endure its skin being constantly torn apart by the intrusive vermin, which call themselves the human race,’ and ‘opens its mouth and imbibes the blood of all and any creatures.’ His images of the earth disintegrating, disgorging from within a lava of stones and an avalanche of fire, of swamps and marshes coming apart, etc. carry obvious catastrophic and/or apocalyptic meanings. For Przybyszewski, the earth is the grave, the marriage bed, and the Childbearing Mother, who ultimately absorbs into its entrails the ‘dirt’ and ‘vermin’ of life, for purification can only be achieved through fire and destruction.