„A pisać, to znaczy przecież żyć?”. O literaturze w cieniu zagłady albo Lem wśród poetów (Leśmian, Różewicz, Baczyński, Lipska)

Abstract

“To Write Means to Live?” On Literature in the Shadow of Holocaust, or Lem amongst the Poets (Leśmian, Różewicz, Baczyński, Lipska) The article undertakes the attempt to describe Stanisław Lem’s views on the topic of the nature of poetry, literature and creative process. The process of this artistic auto-reflexion takes course in the shadow of the Holocaust and amidst the literary confrontation with poets of three generations that took place throughout the first few post-war decades. Crucial proves to be the confrontation with the contemporaries (in the context of reviews dedicated to Baczyński and Rożewicz from 1947 and 1948), which allows us to formulate two alternative models of literature and to declare oneself in favour of one of the sides. The memory of Holocaust, as well as post-war reading of Bolesław Leśmian’s and Ewa Lipska’s poetry results in changes to the juvenile aesthetic declarations. Unchanged however, remains the vitalist element already highlighted in 1945 in the Lem’s letter to Marian Hemar: “to write is to live”.