Inny stan skupienia? Podróż w przestrzeni i czasie w Dwunastu stacjach Tomasza Różyckiego

Abstract

This article offers an interpretation of Tomasz Różycki’s poem Dwanaście stacji [Twelve Stations], a work most frequently compared to Adam Mickiewicz’s Master Thaddeus. It argues, however, that Różycki’s poem is equally indebted to Juliusz Słowacki’s Beniowski and to the tradition of the mock-heroic (heroic-comic) poem. Like Słowacki’s digressive narrative, Dwanaście stacji shares not only a distinctive narrative style but also the motif of the journey undertaken by a protagonist who exhibits many characteristics of the classic anti-hero. Descended from a family of repatriates originating from the region of Lviv, Różycki’s protagonist embarks on two journeys: the first through the Silesian countryside in an effort to reunite his dispersed family, and the second, undertaken by train together with relatives and friends, back to his ancestral homeland. The latter journey, in particular, proves to be not only a movement through geographical space but also a passage through time. The train becomes a space in which present and past converge, and where the living encounter the dead.