What is Różewicz Laughing about? Cover Image

Z czego się śmieje wiersz Różewicza?
What is Różewicz Laughing about?

Author(s): Piotr Michałowski
Subject(s): Polish Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: laughter; ridicule; humour;jester; Tadeusz Różewicz;

Summary/Abstract: An overview of motifs appearing in Tadeusz Różewicz’s poetry such as these of “jester” and “clownery,” “smile,” “laughter” and “mockery” serves as a background for the title reflection, in which the questions of affirmation of someone else’s joy of life; acceptance for ludic laughter; therapeutic role of laughter in face of war trauma; and satirical distance from the observed events come to the forefront. In Różewicz’s oeuvre, a meta-poetic reflexion on the role of laughter in poetry appears from the very beginning as well. The laughter means here the critique or the negation of poetry and the poet; irony and self-mockery – of different type and of different reach that go to the extremes of negative self-topicality. Ridicule of a poem becomes a leitmotif in the late oeuvre of Różewicz as its loudest manifestations are contained in the volume Płaskorzeźba [Bas-relief].

  • Issue Year: 2022
  • Issue No: 52
  • Page Range: 23-38
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Polish
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