Literaci polscy nocą 12/13 maja 1935 roku
Polish men and women of letters in the night of 12th/13th May 1935

Summary/Abstract: In the night of 12th/13th May 1935, at a name-day party held at Zofia Nałkowska’s salon in Warsaw, the crowd of attending writers are receiving a telephone message about Józef Piłsudski’s death. The attendees get all of a sudden confronted against a necessity to redefine their social situation, the behavioural strategies assumed by them appearing quite varied. Basing upon a total of seven literary accounts of the participants (incl. diarist records by Maria Dąbrowska and Zofia Nałkowska; recollections by Maria Kuncewiczowa, Kazimierz Wierzyński, Antoni Słonimski, Witold Gombrowicz, Alfred Łaszowski), the Author has attempted at reconstructing the evening’s events – looking for what is referential whilst what he effectively finds is mostly discrepancies. Nonetheless, whatever appears incoherent, inconsistent, uncertain as regards the facts, can be read in a different perspective: namely, as certain idiomatic representations of an experience.

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