In vita e in morte di Jerzy: il discorso omoerotico nelle lettere e nei Diari di Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz

Abstract

Although Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz made references to homosexuality already in his interwar journalistic writings, in his literary works he tackles it implicitly through a literary filter. In the recently published diary and in the letters he wrote to his lover Jerzy Błeszyński, this theme becomes explicit and allows for a correct depiction of the role that sexuality played in the writer’s life and work. Substitution, comparison, revelation, sacralisation and artistic sublimation are some of the practices identified in the essay in order to trace homosexual discourse in this autobiographical material, a discourse that appears to be closely connected to modernist poetics alongside its philosophical and cultural implications (Nietzsche, Gide, Proust, Wilde, Szymanowski), but also considered taboo by the writer himself.

Keywords

• iwaszkiewicz
• błeszyński
• homosexuality
• diary
• letter writing