Nienapisana epopeja. Kilka uwag o zapomnianym wyzwoleniu
The Unwritten Epos. A Few Remarks on a Forgotten Liberation

Summary/Abstract: Leder examines the absence, in Polish culture, of a narrative on the history of the emancipation of the Polish people. He begins by outlining the conditions that such a narrative ought to fulfil to influence the self-awareness and self-representation of the Polish collective subject. Most importantly, a narrative ought to be complex and powerful enough to affect collective phantasms. Leder points out that the dominant martyrological narrative makes it impossible for an emancipatory narrative to emerge. Next, he discusses the successive stages that such a narrative ought to represent. He explores the first generations who lived in freedom, the Polish elites’ rampart aversion to emancipation, as well as the conflicts that marked the history of the Second Polish Republic, the war and the Communist revolution. Leder concludes that the point is not to discuss all stages of this process in detail, nor is it to shed light on the dramaturgy or weight of each one in particular. The point is rather to understand the great historical trend that has led to Poland’s most important achievement of the last 150 years – emancipation, the attainment of the maturity requisite for freedom – even as the memory of that process is completely repressed.

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