Słowo i milczenie w poezji Anny Kamieńskiej

Abstract

The article shows selected aspects of poetically created fragment of reality involving the relations between the word (or more widely: speaking, speech) and silence in Anna Kamieńska’s writings. While reconstructing the subjective depiction of the word and silence, I take as my point of reference the everyday depiction of both terms. I have interpreted selected lyrical poems from the poet’s later collections (published from 1970), because at that time, marked with the painful experience of her husband’s death, she voiced and expressed difficult existential experiences in her poetry, and their poetical formation shows a close relation between the WORD (SPEAKING) and SILENCE. The axiological marking of the word (speaking) is ambivalent in her poems, words are either positive or negative. The word (speaking) plays an important part in interpersonal communication because positive values are given to important, valuable and truth-related words. On the other hand, negative values are attributed to the word when it is not a carrier of the truth, when it causes harm, and it is unnecessary. When confronted with such word (speech), silence is more highly considered. The negative evaluation is also attributed to dark words, the ones which name unfavourable life experiences. Silence becomes more important (and more of value) than speech when words appear powerless, when they fail to express what is too difficult or impossible to convey. In many of her poems, Kamieńska forms a relation between speech and silence (and also keeping quiet) through the revealed or only suggested life border situation, that is death. When facing the ultimate things, words truly mean nothing, they are needless, and the only thing remaining is silence.