Dramatic construction of faces in Tadeusz Różewicz’s selected poems Cover Image

Dramatyczne konstruowanie twarzy w wybranych utworach Tadeusza Różewicza
Dramatic construction of faces in Tadeusz Różewicz’s selected poems

Author(s): Ewelina Woźniak
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza
Keywords: Tadeusz Różewicz; face; portrait; performativity; horror;

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this article is to present Tadeusz Różewicz as a poetic portraitist. Faces very often appear in the poet’s works and they play a special role there. The methods that are used to construct them can be grouped into four main categories: 1) a face as a performing subject, 2) a face as an object, 3) a face as a static construct, and finally 4) a face as an element, or metonymy, of human existence and entanglement with reality. In Różewicz’s poetry the human face is material and a mirror, but also a universal symbol of the human condition. These faces are usually distorted, decaying, and blurred. They symbolize the disintegration of the world in which human beings have to live. For Różewicz a face is the most condensed image of humanity and an equivalent of a substance in which every external stimulus leaves its mark. The way of using faces as a material and the process of disintegration that is described in detail constitute a dramatic and performative action which implements the objectives of fluid aesthetics, thus showing the moments of transition from meaning to nothingness and the process of erasing meaning.

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 21
  • Page Range: 145-165
  • Page Count: 21
  • Language: Polish