“The Kmicic Boys”. A draft on one of the episodes of Tadeusz Konwicki’s Sennik współczesny [The Contemporary Dream Book

Abstract

The aim of the following paper is to analyze the theme of cruelty in what is considered to be the greatest novel written by Tadeusz Konwicki. The author argues that the way it is pictured focuses almost exclusively on imagery, as the theme itself is beyond traditional literary description (as stated before by the scholar Wolfgang Sofsky). The article focuses not the subject within this one single work only, but also introduces the reader to its evolution and later use in other novels (such as Nic albo nic [Nothing or nothing] or Kilka dni wojny, o której nie wiadomo, czy była [A Few Days of the War We Were Never Sure Actually Happened]) – which introduce the value of ‘hope’ within the theme. Additional attention is drawn to the ‘issues’ Communist Poland’s literary criticism had with the way the writer presented partisan movements during war in the Eastern Borderlands clearly avoiding in-depth analysis of the motif. Marcinów concludes that both Sennik współczesny [The Contemporary Dream Book] and the historical period the novel is set within share the significance of the theme of betrayal and links it with the fate of a prominent partisan leader in the Eastern Borderlands, lieutenant Antoni Burzynski, codename Kmicic.