“The broken silence of generations”: Twentieth-century Inheritors of Peasant Culture

Abstract

The new book about Stanisław Czernik (Wacław Przybyła, Stanisław Czernik. Człowiek i pisarz, Ostrzeszów 2010), the founder of the poetic group called „Okolica Poetów” (The Area of Poets) provides a pretext to discuss twentieth-century poets and novelists, who were born in rural areas and, in their works, were concerned with the life of peasants. The articles offers an overview of the difficult situation of Polish peasants in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Whereas such writers as Marian Czuchnowski or Stanisław Młodożeniec treated their works as vehicles for political agitation, Stanisław Czernik advocated „authenticity” as a primary literary aim. As editor and leader of a literary group, Czernik contributed signifi cantly to the strengthening of the rural trend in Polish literature (W. Myśliwski, E. Redliński, J. Kawalec).