Korzenie pamięci. O Mirabelce Cezarego Harasimowicza

Abstract

The article attempts to interpret the novel Mirabelle in the light of hauntology, taken from Jacques Derrida’s works, existing in the Polish literary studies first and foremost thanks to the works of Jakub Momro and Andrzej Marzec. Harasimowicz’s novel recounts the history of Warsaw from the 1920s until the present-day period. The mirabelle plum tree growing on one of the backyards in Warsaw tells the story of the following generations of the city dwellers who fade away and fall into oblivion. The Holocaust, depicted in the beginning of the novel, does not, however, become the past. The recollection of the genocide is inscribed in contemporary Warsaw, in the city space and the consciousness of its inhabitants. The phantoms of the former dwellers of Nalewki, the Jewish district in Warsaw, visit their homes, little stores, and workshops, trying to end unfinished businesses and engaging with the representatives of the present-day citizens. The gesture of remembrance, which is the replanting and redeveloping a new mirabelle tree in the place of the damaged one, gives people hope for the restoration of balance and strengthens the bonds between the living and the dead.