Metodologia śledztwa w poszukiwaniu biografii Jerzego Siewierskiego

Abstract

The history of literature, like human memory, can be as selective as it is unreliable, which means that many authors of every epoch disappear into the darkness of oblivion. A researcher’s task is to restore the memory of those whose works he or she finds valuable or interesting enough to want to study. The present text deals with Jerzy Siewierski, a largely forgotten writer of post-war Poland and a silent co-founder of the flagship magazine “Współczesność,” in an attempt to reconstruct the biography of the Warsaw-based writer. This work on restoring Siewierski is carried out using methods close to those used by readers of detective novels – after all, the writer himself became famous for them in communist Poland. Thus, we study archival traces, i.e. the traces left by the author himself as well as those that were left by him without his will. Parallel to the archival research, witnesses so people who knew Siewierski and remember him, are being “interviewed”. What emerges from these interviews is a perverse, intelligent, and interesting figure, both significant and in the shadow of the great revolutions. Interestingly, certain elements of the writer’s self-creation allow us to look for subtle connotations with the father of the detective novel, Arthur Conan DoyleThese observations are all the more interesting and valuable for literary research because no comprehensive study of Jerzy Siewierski has been written before, and most information about him comes from the Siewierski family archives, conversations with his relatives, and memorabilia left by the writer.