Odwoływanie granic (Biograficzne i poetyckie przekroczenia Jerzego Ficowskiego)

Abstract

Revoking boundaries (Jerzy Ficowski’s biographical and poetic transcension) The article describes the phenomenon of “revoking” or transcending boundaries, present both in the family tradition and biography of Jerzy Ficowski and in his artistic choices. The biographical reflection focuses especially on the figure of the poet’s father, a bearer of the multicultural experiences of Polish communities in pre-revolutionary Russia, the post-war contacts Ficowski had with emigrant authors and the Jewish diaspora, as well as on the poet’s transcending the boundaries of state-censored works in the mid 1970s. At the same time, the article is looking for a iunctim between the openness encoded in Ficowski’s biography and his poetic language. In doing so, it describes the latter’s qualities, such as meaning inconstancy, semantic opalization of words, homonyms and antonyms incessantly destabilizing the boundaries of word and verse, that seem to be an equivalent of the discussed openness. In particular, attention is drawn to the influence the 1970s had on boosting the semantic potential of Ficowski’s poetry.Key words: Jerzy Ficowski; Tadeusz Ficowski; multiculturalism; hieroglyph; history in poetry; immigration literature;