Solitude and Despair in the Literary Oeuvre of Gustaw Herling-Grudziński1

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article looks at the solitude and despair in the literary oeuvre of Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, drawing on three stories constituting a ‘metaphysical direction’ rooted in Italian historiscapes, and which the writer published in a 1960 collection entitled Skrzydła ołtarza (Polyptych). It marked a new departure from his heavily political work grounded on personal experience of the war and totalitarianism. The article engages with this literature from the author’s personal circumstances, and looks at the sentiments he confronts us with from a long overview of writing upon solitude and on the subject of ‘the island’. It concludes that this ‘new’ direction was nevertheless grounded on sentiments touched upon in his early masterpiece of the Soviet labour camps, Inny Świat (1951), and that for Herling, who renewed his adherence to the Roman Catholic faith in 1943 whilst in hospital, religion constituted the solution to despair for all thinkers with a moral voice; specifically, the solace of compassion.