Alfred Nobel University Journal of Philology (Dec 2022)
CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ’S “PIESEK PRZYDROŻNY” AND “ABECADŁO” AS THE PICTURE OF THE 20th CENTURY
Abstract
The article aims to study the poetics evolution of a great Polish poet and prose writer, Nobel prize winner Czesław Miłosz towards a fundamentally new comprehensive literary form: from “Piesek Przydrożny” (“Roadside Dog” 1997) to “Abecadło” (“Milosz`s ABC`s” 1997) and “Inne Abecadło” (“A Further Alphabet” 1998). The purpose stimulates the usage of the analytical, hermeneutics and receptive methodology, as well as textual analysis. It is stressed that the years of this work publication indicate the writerєі success in his determined search for a form that would be capable, containing immense life material, countless events, lives and artistic-philosophical reflections, to create the picture of the 20th century. The paper highlights why “Piesek Przydrożny” does not meet any requirements for containing the unlimited number of life facts within a text. We’ve noted the organizing function of Piesek in the system of a fictional unity. Moving freely, Piesek made it possible for Miłosz to create a certain series of philosophical pieces (“Ubóstwo wyobraźni”, “Wzniosłość”, “Pieśń dziadowsku”, “Со upadek”, “Powieść”, “Gombrowicz”, “Polski literat”) and several tragic essays – “Ojcowskie kłopoty”, “Zmartwienia historyka” and others. It is proven that while the form of this book contains a variety of material, it still cannot give Miłosz the absolute freedom he was striving for. The writer was determined to find the form which would, according to him, “allow for much freedom”, “not pursue beauty but just register facts”. Considering Е. Brazgovskaya’s findings, the productivity of the alphabet (аbecadło) is proved. The paper expresses the idea that one can treat the alphabet (аbecadło) as a kind of a memoir genre. The innovative structure of “Abecadło”, consisting of essays-novels, is analyzed. The article traces the associative connections which cement 200 essays into a single entity, creating the image of the epoch.
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