Oswoić chorobę, oswoić śmierć – dziennik, pseudodziennik i autobiograficzna powieść popularna wobec doświadczania cierpienia...
Tame Disease Tame Death

Summary/Abstract: As it turns out, a grave (often incurable) disease can be a kind of a modern taboo. An attempt to break the silence is made by persons known from the media (especially women) who are suffering from illness or have had a contact with death (their own or of their loved ones). They are often actresses, painters, journalists or writers, sharing their experiences, openly speaking on what they have survived, presenting visual works (painting, photography, films, etc.) dealing with such topics, or publishing autobiographical texts (diaries, memoirs, feature articles, fictionalized prose, etc.) Testimonies of struggle against breast cancer, as analyzed in the article, include texts of autobiographical character by Katarzyna Grochola, Krystyna Kofta and Anna Mazurkiewicz. The writers have recorded a moving depiction of their experiences in an actual diary (K. Kofta), a pseudo-diary (A. Mazurkiewicz) and an autobiographical popular novel (K. Grochola). In case of K. Kofta, the diary account has been additionally supplemented with later drawings by the author. In case of all three writers mentioned above, speaking about disease, suffering and death contributes, to a lesser or greater degree, to breaking of the modern taboo. In extreme situations, and struggle against a lethal disease can surely be regarded as such, questions on the meaning of life arise inevitably. For many people, death means the end of their world, with no hope for anything after. A modern human has been left on his own and became completely helpless in view of empty heaven, deprived of hope, indifferent to his own fate. Only extreme experiences, extreme situations, sometimes wake him from his numbness. Amazing statements by authors of the texts under discussion seem to confirm the thesis on their experiences, perceived as experience of the entireness of human nature (Anna Mazurkiewicz), incredible enrichment and awakening of faith (Katarzyna Grochola) or appreciation of what you have got (Krystyna Kofta). Therefore, contrary to what the present, post-modern world might want, they are not just traumatic experiences which should be quickly forgotten and never returned to.

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