“Ja już podarłem kilka swoich sztuk…”. From the personal archive of Adam Tarn

Abstract

The personal archive of Adam Tarn (1902–1975), the first editor-in-chief of the Dialog monthly and a translator, critic, novelist, and playwright, includes notes with loose ideas for plays, notes to his unfinished book on Chekhov, and minor literary attempts, which he corrected, set aside and later expanded. This material, which Tarn’s heirs kindly offered me for study, constitutes a valuable proof the creative process and the evolution of the writing of the Dialog’s editor-in-chief. In the context of Obraz ojca w czterech ramach [Father’s Image in Four Frames] (1934), Tarn’s début novel and the only one he completed, the novel Kameleon [Chameleon] is an intriguing item in the author’s collection of unfinished works. In this article I shall discuss the material contained in Tarn’s personal archive. This study offers an insight into his “internal laboratory” of writing and enables one to read it from, e.g., the biographical perspective. The dating of the collected material can be only approximated. The earliest surviving prose attempt written in French probably came from the interwar period, while the final notes were composed during his émigré period after 1968, when Tarn was working on his unfinished book on Chekhov.