„Żywej duszy”. Postsekularna dedykacja Widoków wymazów Kacpra Bartczaka
“A Living Soul”: The Postsecular Dedication of Kacper Bartczak’s Widoki wymazy

Summary/Abstract: The article presents a postsecular interpretation of Kacper Bartczak’s (b. 1972) poeticwork, with particular emphasis on the 2021 volume Widoki wymazy (Sights Swabs).This book culminates Bartczak’s long-standing predilection for processing and utilizingreligious themes of Christian provenance, a practice hitherto undiscussed in the literature.Analyzing the poems, prose poems, and the longer prose text “Prześwietlone dzienniki”(Overexposed Diaries) that comprise the volume, the author proposes a postsecularpoetics of Bartczak, characterized by combining contemporary scholarly discourseswith religious lexemes, expressions, and themes, which produces the paradoxical effectof simultaneously weakening the confessional significance of the latter and intensifyingtheir artistic impact. Bartczak gives his epiphany records a typically modern, secularform, but by imbuing them with biblical and religious allusions, he opens the possibilityof interpreting them as records of authentic, albeit highly individualized, spiritualexperiences – similar to those described by J. McClure in American literature, close to thepoet. In turn, what accompanies Bartczak’s critique of institutionalized religion involvesfar-reaching formal transformations, enabling one to perceive him as a continuatorof the theolinguistic trend present in Polish poetry of the second half of the twentiethcentury. Furthermore, the article discusses Bartczak’s work, which employs the conceptof postsecularism in his readings of the philosophy of W. James and the poetry of L. Glück,in the context of his own scholarly and critical practices and the metaliterary reflectionembedded in his poetry.

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