The Shoah, postmodernism, the canon and popular culture

Zagłada, postmodernizm, kanon i literatura popularna

Author(s): Bartosz Dąbrowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

Keywords: Holocaust; postmodernism; canon; crime novel; trauma; postmemory

In the article the author asks a question about the reasons for the absence of postmodern and popular literature in the prose canon of the Shoah. He sees the cause of this state of affairs in the historical conditions of the literature of the Shoah, in the ethically and moralistically oriented reading of its texts and in the problems of this prose associated with the categories of fiction and fictionality. According to the author, the “exclusion” of postmodern and popular prose in the canon and its distance toward these phenomena results from the concern about the excess of textuality which is peculiar to these literary forms. Another reason is associated with the perspective, historically determined in the Polish context, of understanding postmodernism as an ahistorical trend – contrary to the classical views of Linda Hutcheon, Amy Elias or Paula Crosthwaite, who emphasise the state of being “possessed by history”, typical for this formation, which according to the researchers brings about a far-reaching transformation of the perception of historicity and the attitude of literature toward the trauma. As a result, the postmodern answer to the trauma of the past makes a recourse to the repertory of different literary means and it(usually) engages the Shoah from the perspective of a temporal and generational distance. In a similar manner the author attempts to demonstrate, on the basis of a crime novel by Zygmunt Miłoszewski, "Ziarno prawdy" (2011), how Polish memory about the Shoah is reflected in popular literature, being a reflection of the collective mechanism of repression, processing and answering to the trauma of the past.

The attitude of Hungarian literature toward the Shoah. The problems concerning the canon

Literatura węgierska wobec Zagłady. Wokół kanonu

Author(s): Kinga Piotrowiak-Junkiert / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

Keywords: Hungary; genocide; canon; Jewish literature in Hungary

The text presents a number of the most important figures of the landscape of Hungarian literature devoted to the theme of the Shoah, among others S. Márai, M. Radnóti, J. Pilinszky, F. Sánta, who faced the problems of memory, the torments of war and the experience of the “Jewish condition”. Each of the subsequent generations of writers engaged the subject of the Shoah in different ways, changing the conventions or the stylistic or genre-related resources, owing to which there emerged an extremely abundant literary material, varied as far as the form, volume, language, artistic freedom and references to the works which constitute the canon of writings devoted to this subject are concerned. One of the formal solutions which are unique on a world scale is the phenomenon of de-tabooisation, of choosing genres which are incongruous with the rules of aesthetic bienséance (irony, the grotesque, surrealism), whose presence is testimony to the lack of the presence of the Shoah in the social discourse and to a desire to restore it to its rightful place in the context of literary experiments which provoke but which also demand to be perceived and solved.

Always a fragment. On Polish literary studies and its canon (of the Shoah)

Zawsze fragment. O polskim literaturoznawstwie i jego kanonie (Zagłady)

Author(s): Paweł Wolski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

Keywords: Holocaust; literary (meta)criticism; canon

The author considers the status of the canon of Holocaust literary studies. Based on Jan and Aleida Assmanns’ well known thesis he proposes to consider this kind of writing as an Encyclopedia – a cumulative reading list of literary studies works considered canonical, and, on the other hand, as a Method, i.e. a model mechanism of creating an analysis and exegesis of the Holocaust writing. The author concludes that despite numerous attempts there is a dominance of canons which fall within the sphere of the first category whereas the second one still awaits fruition. According to the author, a crucial element of the latter would be to define the specific relation between a scholar and the object of his or her research as a particular feature of Holocaust literature and its theory.

“Narration is the persistent shadow of existence”. Some remarks about the canon of the Shoah in the most recent literary works

„Opowiadanie jest stałym bytu cieniem”. Kilka uwag o kanonie Zagłady w literaturze najnowszej

Author(s): Marta Tomczok / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

Keywords: canon; narration; Holocaust; story; novel

On the basis of abundant short-story and novelistic material the author presents the formation of the contemporary canon of the Shoah. According to Marta Tomczok, the domination of the short story over the novelistic form constitutes a result of the dialogue of generations and its influence upon the narrative situation of the prose by Agnieszka Kłos, Sylwia Chutnik or Magdalena Tulli. And in a deeper sense, which is discernible in "Czarne sezony" by Michał Głowiński, it involves a departure from the fictionalisation of the Shoah in favour of an autobiographical and memoir reflection. The author perceives the causes of such a state of affairs in the influence of "Sąsiedzi" by Jan Tomasz Gross upon Polish literature after 2000, and the rhetoric of cruelty, which is more and more discernible in it, as well as in the separation of the historiographical and the narrative discourses, which according to the author, influence each other in the case of the contemporary narrations about the Shoah, above all in the sphere of the popular novel.

The necessity of a trace. Canons of children and teenagers’ literature

Konieczność śladu. Kanony literatury dla dzieci i młodzieży

Author(s): Małgorzata Wójcik-Dudek / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

Keywords: Holocaust; Children and Youths’ Literature; canon of required readings; loss

The article is an attempt to characterize the school canon of required readings concerning the Holocaust, as well as other books dedicated to the youngest readers. The author analyses the records of core curriculum and inspects books for children which were written in the first decade of the 21st century. In these recommended readings she notices a mechanism of creating the post-memory of young readers’ generation, which shape corresponds to the contemporary reflection on the Holocaust, undergoing constant changes which are a result of appearances of still new contexts. The researcher considers a trace to be a superior category which enables forming of contemporary remembering matrices. For the same reason the author pays special attention to this motive while analysing the chosen texts. It results in the conclusion that the presence of a trace generates nostalgia, which in turn leads to the feeling of loss, a category without which it would be difficult to imagine contemporary texts on the Holocaust for children.

Translations: Letters and poems

Przekłady: Listy i wiersze

Author(s): Sołomon Bart / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

“Biographies also consist of loops”. The un-narrated life of Irena Gelblum

„Biografie składają się również z zapętleń”. Nieopowiedziane życie Ireny Gelblum

Author(s): Elżbieta Dutka / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

Keywords: "Irena’s Choice"; Remigiusz Grzela; biography; ghetto

The article presents the book by Remigiusz Grzela entitled "Wybór Ireny" in the context of the contemporary controversies/debates about the biographies and the narrations about the Shoah. In this case the “biographical loops” result both from the life attitude of the female protagonists who are described as well as from the strategy that was embraced by the biographer. The messenger of the Jewish Combat Organisation disassociated herself from her past and created a new image and biography for herself. The writer is continuously poised between the truth that he intends to reveal and fiction – a mystification put forward by Irena Gelblum vel Waniewicz vel Conti Di Mauro. Thus a story emerged whose essence (and significance) consists not so much in familiarising the reader with the figure and the tragic experiences of one of the “scorched” ones but in the exhibition of the ethical and literary problems associated with an attempt at presenting such a story.

To tell about the invisible. An attempt at analysing the movie "Ida" by Paweł Pawlikowski

Opowiedzieć niewidzialne. Próba analizy filmu "Ida" Pawła Pawlikowskiego

Author(s): Katarzyna Mąka-Malatyńska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

Keywords: "Ida"; Paweł Pawlikowski; Łukasz Żal; Holocaust; film and history; frame composition; light in cinema

The present text is the first attempt in Poland at analysing the movie by Paweł Pawlikowski, "Ida". The author’s premise is that the cinematographic means of expression which are employed in "Ida" serve to convey meanings which do not result merely from the course of the action and which are not contained in the dialogues. A closer look at the camera work, at the relation between the image and the sound, the recurrent stylistic means in the film allows one to reach the meaning which results from the deep structure of the cinematographic message. The article frequently mentions the statements made by the makers of the film, the accounts from the shooting and the postproduction periods because here the process of the analysis is understood to a certain extent as the reconstruction of the process of creation. The fundamental aim of the analysis of Pawlikowski’s film is to situate it within a historical and cinematographic context, reference to which has direct justification in the structure of the film. Such an attitude opens Pawlikowski’s work to the subsequent stages of interpretation and facilitates a polemics with the reading of "Ida" which is already well-established in critical works.

The midget, the frog and the stranger or a surreal story about the Holocaust

Karzeł, żaba i obcy, czyli surrealistyczna opowieść o Holokauście

Author(s): Gaweł Janik / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

Keywords: Holocaust; Shoah; comic books; popular culture; "Achtung Zelig!"; "Maus"

The article attempts to indicate a change in the means of representing the Shoah. The latter is more and more frequently described with the use of the means suggested by popular culture. An attempt was made to reconstruct the evolution of the discourse of the Shoah, with special reference to the contemporary representations which were discussed on the basis of the example of the comic book genre. The subject of the Holocaust comic book was treated in a comprehensive manner by exploring its history, constitutive features and criticism. The comic book entitled "Achtung Zelig! Druga wojna" by Krzysztof Gawronkiewicz and Krystian Rosenberg was used as an example to illustrate the problem which is engaged in the article. Special attention was devoted to its genesis, its realisation of the features peculiar to the genre, its innovative nature and reception. There is an indication of the sources of the surreal convention which was employed by the Polish authors. This convention may have originated, among other things, from the occult roots of Nazism. The authors also mentioned the links between "Achtung Zelig!"… with cinematographic works such as "Hanna" by Joe Wright and "Zelig" by Woody Allen, as well as with Krzysztof Zalewski’smusical project of the same title. Moreover, the authors indicated the similarities between "Achtung Zelig!"… and "Maus" by Art Spiegelman in an attempt to evaluate the extent to which the employment and transformation of models used in the American graphic novel was successful in the case of the Polish comic book.

Reviews: A conversation with the present/absent one. "Niepokoje. Twórczość Tadeusza Różewicza wobec Zagłady". Red. P. Krupiński. Warszawa, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2014

Recenzje: Rozmowa z (nie)obecnym. "Niepokoje. Twórczość Tadeusza Różewicza wobec Zagłady". Red. Piotr Krupiński. Warszawa, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2014

Author(s): Wojciech Browarny / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

The review discusses a collection of articles entitled "Niepokoje. Twórczość Tadeusza Różewicza wobec Zagłady" (ed. Piotr Krupiński). Its author directs his attention above all to the dissertations and essays which engage the problem of the interpretative community in which the Różewiczian “traces” of this past are perceived. The text also features a question about the Polish narration (memory) of modernity, and, to be more specific, about the role of Różewicz’s works in the revelation and interpretation of the understatements, inconsistencies and adulterations. The review emphasises the authentic polivocality of the debate about the literary representation of the Holocaust in which the authors of the book participate.

Reviews: Three books in one: history, analysis and anthology of cultural life in Buchenwald. M. I. Sacha: "„Gdyście w obóz przybyć już raczyli...". Obraz kultury lagrowej w świadectwach więźniów Buchenwaldu 1937–1945" Bydgoszcz–Gdańsk

Recenzje: Trzy książki w jednym tomie: historia, analiza i antologia życia kulturalnego w Buchenwaldzie. M. I. Sacha: "„Gdyście w obóz przybyć już raczyli...". Obraz kultury lagrowej w świadectwach więźniów Buchenwaldu 1937–1945" Bydgoszcz–Gdańsk

Author(s): Paweł Wolski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

The text discusses Magdalena Sacha’s approach to the issue of cultural activity in death and labour camps in her book "„Gdyście w obóz przybyć już raczyli…”. Obraz kultury lagrowej w świadectwach więźniów Buchenwaldu 1937–1945". It consists of three parts: a historical introduction of major death and labour camps in the Third Reich, an analysis of the cultural production in Buchenwald and an anthology of poetry created in Buchenwald and HASAG-Leipzig camps. The author of the article argues that Sacha’s seemingly traditional approach to historiography is deeply involved in the methodology introduced by New Historicism.

Reviews: The pitfalls of theory. Aleksandra Ubertowska: "Holokaust. Auto (tanato) grafie". Warszawa, Instytut Badań Literackich PAN Wydawnictwo, 2014

Recenzje: W sidłach teorii. Aleksandra Ubertowska: "Holokaust. Auto (tanato) grafie". Warszawa, Instytut Badań Literackich PAN Wydawnictwo, 2014

Author(s): Bartłomiej Krupa / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

"Holokaust. Auto (tanato) grafie", the most recent book by a distinguished Polish researcher of the literature of the Shoah, Aleksandra Ubertowska, engages the themes which the author herself considers peripheral. The researcher emphasises the instability of the texts that are analysed – essays, women’s writing and the autobiographies of the historians of the Shoah. The main reservations of the reviewer have to do with the lack of a precise indication of the things which lie at the heart of the discourse of the Shoah and of why the selected texts – and these include e.g. the works by Primo Levy and Jean Améry – were considered marginal. Ubertowska also indulges in quite far-fetched associations, and her argument stumbles along theoretical, excessively free-ranging though erudite considerations. In a number of cases there is also a lack of certain important contexts, e.g. a reference to the French feminist historiography. The author of the review also has a different opinion concerning the evaluation of certain phenomena – of Raul Hilberg’s research method or of constructing an analogy between the Jewish condition and the homosexual condition. However, the publication which is here discussed is at its best when the author speaks her own mind instead of resorting to the fashionable, alien, theoretical discourse.

Reviews: Women and the Holocaust: a brand new old discipline. "Women and the Holocaust: New Perspectives and Challenges". Eds. A. Peto, L. Hecht, K. Krasuska. Warszawa, Instytut Badań Literackich PAN Wydawnictwo, 2015

Recenzje: Kobiety i Zagłada: nowa stara dyscyplina. "Women and the Holocaust: New Perspectives and Challenges". Eds. A. Peto, L. Hecht, K. Krasuska. Warszawa, Instytut Badań Literackich PAN Wydawnictwo, 2015

Author(s): Paweł Wolski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

The text presents a collection of essays entitled "Women and the Holocaust: New Perspectives and Challenges" which tackles the issues of female experience of the Holocaust. The author notes that the book as a whole entangles new and old approaches to the problem, thus presenting an interesting, although partly repetitive overview of women holocaust studies perceived as an autonomous field of study.

Reviews: Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves? Agnieszka Kłos: "Gry w Birkenau". Wrocław, Fundacja na Rzecz Kultury i Edukacji im. Tymoteusza Karpowicza, 2015

Recenzje: Ziarnko do ziarnka? Agnieszka Kłos: "Gry w Birkenau". Wrocław, Fundacja na Rzecz Kultury i Edukacji im. Tymoteusza Karpowicza, 2015

Author(s): Ewa Graczyk / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

Ewa Graczyk’s text is above all an attempt at describing the narrative structure of the collection of stories by Agnieszka Kłos entitled "Gry w Birkenau". According to the author of the essay, the contemporary reflection about the Shoah and the accompanying awareness of the impossibility of closing the post-Holocaust space – both the literal and the semantic one – are ubiquitous in Agnieszka Kłos’s prose. In the writings by the author of "Gry"… there is a recurrence of a sort of a “narrative enjambment” which consists in the continuation of the particular themes and subjects by seemingly finished works. This device yields the effect of movement, falling apart and the intertexture of the tropes which are crucial for this prose. This aspect of Ewa Graczyk’s prose which is discussed is associated with the problem of the nomadic singularity of the narratrix/protagonist of the stories. This singularity has to do with the constant constitution (and frequently deconstruction) of the rebellious lesbian feminine subjectivity, which inquires after the power, sex and gender in the world after Birkenau. These tensions are exhibited in the text by juxtaposing "Gry w Birkenau" with the pre-Holocaust writings of Bruno Schulz and Debora Vogel. This juxtaposition enables us to see that Agnieszka Kłos’s stories seem to invoke both Schulzian confrontations of the Maker and the Creator with the work and the world as well as the literary experiments of Debora Vogel in which there is a seeming absence of the narratrix and the creatrix.

Reviews: A red plait. Martin Pollack: "Skażone krajobrazy". Przeł. Karolina Niedenthal. Wołowiec, Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2014

Recenzje: Rudy warkocz. Martin Pollack: "Skażone krajobrazy". Przeł. Karolina Niedenthal. Wołowiec, Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2014

Author(s): Piotr Krupiński / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

The present essay is devoted to a book by Martin Pollack entitled "Skażone krajobrazy". In this volume the Austrian reporter and essayist creates a peculiar map of Central and Eastern Europe. The former includes the sites of mass murders which were perpetrated in strict secrecy, and which until today have not been commemorated. Pollack argues that until this happens, the perpetrators who attempted at all costs to commit their crimes without any witnesses will prevail. A separate trait of Pollack’s essay has to do with a reflection about the “topography of terror”: the author presents with a poet’s devotion the landscapes in which acts of genocide were perpetrated. This enables the readers to examine the process of the Shoah from yet another perspective – a post-anthropocentric perspective.

Reviews: “The wail of the genes”. M. Grzebałkowska: "1945. Wojna i pokój". Warszawa, Biblioteka Gazety Wyborczej, 2015. A. Janko: "Mała zagłada". Kraków, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2015

Recenzje: „Płacz genów”. M. Grzebałkowska: "1945. Wojna i pokój". Warszawa, Biblioteka Gazety Wyborczej, 2015. A. Janko: "Mała zagłada". Kraków, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2015

Author(s): Marta Tomczok / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

In her review the author compares the narrations about the war and the Shoah which were published in 2015: a report by Magdalena Grzebałkowska entitled "1945. Wojna i pokój" and "Mała zagłada" by Anna Janko. The basis of the comparison is constituted by the Shoah of the Jews as the common, although secondary theme of both books, its influence upon the social imagination and the rhetoric of both narrations. Apart from indicating the strong points of the narrations, which include an in-depth study of the archive materials associated with the end of the war (Grzebałkowska) or the presentation of the problem – which was hardly present in the writings devoted to the war and occupation in Poland (the pacification of the village Sochy in the Zamojszczyzna region in 1943, of which Janko’s family fell victim), Marta Tomczok directs her attention to the weaknesses of such discourse, especially in reference to "Mała zagłada". These weaknesses include: the intensification of the suffering of the recipient, effected through the juxtaposition in one book of the greatest massacres of children in the history of the world and the rhetoric of the Shoah transposed into the area of the stories about the war sufferings of the Poles. Janko presents both narrations, the Polish and the Jewish one, as mutually competitive.

Reviews: Pop(Histories) of Polish emissaries. Comic books. "Kurier z Warszawy". Scen. M. Urbanek i M. Palka. Rys. B. Stefanowicz (...) "Jan Karski. Człowiek, który odkrył Holokaust". Scen. M. Rizzo. Rys. L. Bonaccorso. Przeł. A. Hołub...

Recenzje: (Pop)Historie polskich emisariuszy. Komiksy. "Kurier z Warszawy". Scen. M. Urbanek i M. Palka. Rys. B. Stefanowicz (...) "Jan Karski. Człowiek, który odkrył Holokaust". Scen. M. Rizzo. Rys. L. Bonaccorso. Przeł. A. Hołub...

Author(s): Krzysztof Lichtblau / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

The review is devoted to two comic books about Polish emissaries who were active during the Second World War. The first one, "Kurier z Warszawy" by Mariusz Urbanek, Mateusz Palka (script) and Bartłomiej Stefanowicz (drawings), is the history of Jan Nowak-Jeziorański’s mission since 15 September 1939, when the latter was already on the front line, until the press conference with the journalists held in the Ministry of Information of Great Britain in 1945. The second one, "Jan Karski. Człowiek, który odkrył Holokaust", is the work of Italian artists: Marco Rizzo (script) and Lelio Bonaccorso (drawings). From this comic book we also learn about the tasks performed by the Polish war emissary, Jan Karski, until he reaches the United States and makes an account about the state in which his fatherland found itself. In both cases the authors used the memoirs of the emissaries which were published in book form. The aim of the review is to direct the reader’s attention to the changes which occur during the adaptation of such sources to comic books. One of such elements includes the introduction of images and the transposition of the narration from the verbal to the graphical plane. Another important category which is used in the review is the representativeness of the narration of testimony. The entirety of the considerations is summarised by a remark about the transformations of the contemporary comic books about the Holocaust and the location of the comic books which are discussed in this area.

Reviews: Reconstructing a Jewish town. Nils Roemer: "German City, Jewish Memory. The Story of Worms". Waltham, Brandeis (...) Michael Meng: "Shattered Spaces. Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland". Cambridge, Harvard...

Recenzje: Rekonstruowanie żydowskiego miasta. Nils Roemer: "German City, Jewish Memory. The Story of Worms". Waltham, Brandeis (...) Michael Meng: "Shattered Spaces. Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland". Cambridge, Harvard...

Author(s): Paweł Wolski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

The text briefly compares two books: Nils Roemer’s "German City, Jewish Memory. The Story of Worms" and Michael Meng’s "Shattered Spaces. Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland". Both represent fascinating approaches to the process of the reconstruction of the Jewish identity as an important part of the European urban culture destroyed during WWII. By discussing these issues on the examples of Worms (Roemer) and Warsaw, Wrocław, Potsdam, Berlin (Meng) both, albeit in different ways, restore the Jewish identity of these cities not only by approaching the history of historical or architectural landmarks, but also by discussing some less material, discoursive memory markers such as mythology, tourism, politics etc.

Notes of Authors

Noty o Autorach

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

Fifteen years and thirty issues of journal for cultural history "Gračanički glasnik"

Petnaest godina i trideset brojeva časopisa za kulturnu historiju Gračanički glasnik

Author(s): Atif Kujundžić / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 30/2010

Keywords: Gračanički glasnik