Models of Represented Reality in the Prose of Tadeusz Konwicki

Abstract

Among contemporary Polish writers Tadeusz Konwicki has enjoyed rather exceptional popularity with both readers and literary critics. His writing has attracted discussions and critical analyses ever since mid-1950s, a time when he broke with principles of socialist realism as evidenced in his early prose, and published Rojsty (1956; Marshes)a controversial account of his participation in Polish guerrilla units of AK (Armia Krajowa), Home Army that fought against Germans and at end of war (1944-1945) turned its arms against Soviet army. His popularity continued to increase in decade before fall of communism and in postcommunist period. This became apparent from many interviews which author granted to leading Polish journals, and from numerous studies published by well known critics.1 It should be noted that in 1986 Stanislaw Nowicki's (the pseudonym of Stanislaw Beres) conversations with Konwicki appeared under revealing title, Pol wieku czysca (Half a Century of Purgatory).2 Konwicki's good fortune with reading public, as well as with his film viewers, is not limited to his country alone, but reaches far beyond its borders. He probably enjoys status of most frequently (beside Stanislaw Lem) translated Polish writer today, being particularly favoured by Anglo-American translators: all major works of Konwicki are now available in English. Nor is there a shortage of critical commentaries in English either. In fall of 1994, The Review of Contemporary Fiction devoted half of its issue (no. 3) to Konwicki's prose3 while second half concentrated on writing of another prominent contemporary author-Angela Carter. For some Polish critics Konwicki's success with his readership, both in Poland and abroad, remains a puzzle. They are inclined to attribute this to writer's skilful catering to and manipulating of cheap taste of his readers, and to his facile narrative technique which creates impression that his prose brings us into midst of real events, documentary records or revelation of intimate autobiographical confessions of a sincere, but at times mentally or spiritually disturbed, narrator. In Konwicki's case stratum of represented objects, to use R. Ingarden's term, clearly dominates all other strata of his writing and is definitely the first thing that comes to [the reader's] attention in a simple reading of work and usually he stops with them and their vicissitudes.4 The use of this strategy explains why some Polish critics reproached Konwicki for compromising standards of high literature in favour of its low counterpart. Indeed, referential power of Konwicki's prose, delivered in an easy, almost colloquial style is compelling and at least partly responsible for his literary popularity. The reader who enters Konwicki's fictional world is overwhelmed by density of narrated events and concreteness of its imagery; this is even of those narratives in which writer exploits juxtaposition of external reality with dreams and fantasy. The latter always appear in disguise of ponderable happenings. Therefore, question of reality, understood as reference to any external socio-political, historical, contemporary chain of events and to possible psychological experiences of protagonists, should constitute an important aspect in all critical considerations of Konwicki's prose. To be sure, we are not talking here about so called reflections of reality in Konwicki's works to establish what is true or false, but about way in which stratum of represented objects is being shaped. In most simplified way, models of reality in Konwicki's prose can be approximated through Bakhtinian concept of chronotope, that is, as an intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spacial relationships5 placed on axis of temporal order of past, present and future. His autobiographical and quasibiographical prose seems to be particularly well-suited for this kind of methodological approach. …