Lost Landscapes as a “Dialogue between” Agata Tuszyńska and Isaac Bashevis Singer Cover Image

„Pejzaże pamięci” jako dialog Agaty Tuszyńskiej i Isaaca Bashevisa Singera
Lost Landscapes as a “Dialogue between” Agata Tuszyńska and Isaac Bashevis Singer

Author(s): Izabela Sobczak
Subject(s): Comparative Study of Literature
Published by: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
Keywords: landscape; dialogue; Agata Tuszyńska; Isaac Bashevis Singer; Jewish identity;

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes Agata Tuszyńska’s Lost Landscapes: In Search of Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Jews of Poland (Singer. Pejzaże pamięci) and Familial History of Fear (Rodzinna historia lęku), in which landscape becomes a space of dialogue with the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer and a literary attempt to inscribe a private history. Intertextual references to Singer’s works serve not merely a stylistic function, but become a tool of affective participation in memory and shared Jewish identity. This dialogue takes on a spatial dimension in a dual sense: the landscape brings together a vision of pre-war, lost Poland with the real, post-war terrain marked by absence (R. Sendyka) and affect (H.U. Gumbrecht). In the spirit of Stanisław Balbus’s “reminiscence”, Tuszyńska does not compete with Singer but co-creates the narrative, complementing the modernist portrait. The landscape thus becomes not only an (auto)biographical gesture, but also a literary map of reclaiming voice and place within a community of memory.

  • Issue Year: 2025
  • Issue No: 43
  • Page Range: 153-167
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Polish
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