Epopeja: Myśliwski, Herbert, Mrożek

Abstract

The present study was inspired by my reading of Wiesław Myśliwski’s Stone Upon Stone, which led to my deep conviction that the novel is the only truly successful peasant and national epic in Polish post-WWII literature. One the one hand, it can easily be located in the romantic tradition of epic writing; on the other hand, its unconventional realization re-defines the epic as a supra-generic genre, which downplays heroic deeds but foregrounds such categories as the whole and the sense. The proposed understanding of the epic as supra-generic in its character cannot be limited to the prose of Myśliwski and necessitates other examples – preferably chosen from poetry and drama. Therefore I have attempted a review of Polish post-WWII literature, searching for works whose “uniqueness” (but not purely epic quality) is achieved through a dialogue with the “epic-ness”. Having carried my research, I have chosen two notable authors: Zbigniew Herbert, whose whole oeuvre (not only his poems) should, in my opinion, be treated as part of the history of the epic, and Sławomir Mrożek, with his most epic play Love in the Crimea. The texts of Myśliwski, Herbert and Mrożek that are analyzed in the present book are significant in a non-literary context, too. Their non-literary significance is best seen when we assume that literature which is essentially autotelic achieves its full meaning only in relation with the real. This is clearly achieved in the epic – a genre that captures and saves unique “worlds” that appeared and disappeared in the course of history but that can be endowed with immortality in culture. Still, this function does not exhaust the epic’s potential. Even postmodernist thinkers admit that the state of the world in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century is deplorable, and the scale of what used to be called social injustice – far too great, and we will not escape from these problems by taking refuge in a labyrinth of autotelic texts. The contemporary world of ever-growing social, political and cultural conflicts demands the literature that is ready to take the risk of becoming utopian – in other words, it demands the epic. After all, isn’t the work that stresses the polymorphic and polyphonic nature of the world – utopian? It certainly is. But without the epic, which tells us who and where we are, and which enriches us with its (lack of) knowledge, it is difficult to imagine any salvation for the world of injustice. At least the salvation that literature is capable of bringing – i.e. epic, re-constructed and re-constructing.