All this and one hundred other actions and one hundred thousand other actions. Everyday life in Tadeusz Różewicz’s poetry Cover Image

To wszystko i sto innych czynności, i sto tysięcy innych czynności. Codzienność w poezji Tadeusza Różewicza
All this and one hundred other actions and one hundred thousand other actions. Everyday life in Tadeusz Różewicz’s poetry

Author(s): Michał Bolek
Subject(s): Polish Literature
Published by: Wydział Filologiczny Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego
Keywords: everyday life; faith; human; death; writing; poetry;

Summary/Abstract: The main topic of the article is everyday life depicted in the poetry by Tadeusz Różewicz. Its reference point is the concept of everyday life constructed by Bernhard Waldenfels. He distinguishes three ways of perceiving it – it entails regular order, embraces everything that is palpable and tangible, as well as is closed-in-itself and restricted. According to Grażyna Borkowska, everyday life is synonymic to both daunting prose of life and heart-warming familiarness. Thus, everyday life embraces a wide range of human experiences and is valuated both positively and negatively. The category of everyday life understood as above functions as a frame for interpretation of selected Różewicz’s poems which represent different topics – religion and faith, humanity, death, and writing. Everyday life functions in Różewicz’s poetry as a space for religious experience; it enables formulating diverse universal conclusions about humanity and their relations with the world, allows the subject to speak about human mortality, and is the platform for self-referential deliberation about poetry and creating. Interpreting selected poems from the perspective of everyday life lets the reader capture deeper, ambiguous meaning of faith, perceive human existence in its double sense – both ordinary and extraordinary, bind everyday life with death and present it as a space for creating poetry. Those measures make discussed issues clearer and more concrete and combine them with human experience. Showing a specific tension between them and everyday life makes the interpretation richer and opens perspectives for discovering new meanings.

  • Issue Year: 2021
  • Issue No: 12
  • Page Range: 136-157
  • Page Count: 22
  • Language: Polish
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