The Portrait of Tadeusz Różewicz’s Mother

Abstract

Using a variety of sources – photographs, poems, fragments of a diary and family memories – in his collection of short stories The Mother Departs Tadeusz Różewicz presents a complex portrait of his mother as a young girl, a caring mother, a mature woman and a dying old woman. The image of his mother, memorized and documented through a range literary means, emerges as a version of the myth of Magna Mater. The poet also tries to imagine his mother after death, whether she is a decomposing corpse under the ground or a spirit in the land of the dead. The stories can be treated as a literary attempt at dealing with profound grief and going through mourning. It is not only the grief and mourning of the writer but also of the reader who shares a similar experience. The memories gathered in the collection The Mother Departs have a therapeutic signifi cance, they enable liberation from trauma and constitute a frame for an eternal portrait of the mother. It is art that provides the possibility of preserving something for posterity and of immortalizing people and their work.