"Nie jestem przygotowany, ale jestem gotów”. Głosy z celi śmierci
“I Am Unprepared, but I Am Ready”. Voices from the Death Chamber

Summary/Abstract: Death comes unexpectedly, and it is impossible to prepare oneself for it. Youth knows nothing about death, while old age – an existence whose profound meaning is summarized in “the death chamber”, the apt poetic phrase applied by Tadeusz Różewicz – is closer to thinking about it. Dariusz Czaja asks about the possibility of preparing oneself for one’s death and renders the object of his discourse Victor Hugo’s masterpiece: “Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné” (1829), whose “plot” takes place in an actual death chamber. He ends by comparing remarks about unpreparedness for death with Leo Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, in which he follows the Heideggerian space of das Man, embracing the story’s protagonist on all sides.

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