“Does the Abyss Need a Language?” Voices from Beyond the Grave Cover Image
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„Czy otchłań potrzebuje języka?”. Głosy zza grobu
“Does the Abyss Need a Language?” Voices from Beyond the Grave

Author(s): Dariusz Czaja
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts
Published by: Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: Edgar Lee Masters;Spoon River Anthology

Summary/Abstract: “Spoon River Anthology”, the masterpiece by Edgar Lee Masters (1915), creates right in front of our eyes a micro-cosmos of a fictional small town in the American Midwest. This is by no means an anthropological panorama or a sociological record but texts that resemble rather incisive photographic portraits, which try to extract the distinctness and exceptional character of the portrayed sitter. In his anthology Masters went underground and brought the dead back to life: 243 epitaphs contain stories about their lives on Earth, each successive text being a piece of a puzzle creating a vision of the world of the provinces.The paradox of “Spoon River Anthology” consists of the fact that while speaking about the netherworld, the land of death, it actually speaks about life and is incapable of saying something exclusively about death.

  • Issue Year: 320/2018
  • Issue No: 1–2
  • Page Range: 79-86
  • Page Count: 8
  • Language: Polish