Między podniebieniem i otchłanią. Wokół pokarmowego szyfru w Szpitalu Przemienienia Stanisława Lema
Between the Roof of the Mouth and the Abyss. On the Food Cipher in Stanisław Lem’s Hospital of the Transfiguration

Summary/Abstract: The article is an attempt to interpret the food themes that often appear in Stanisław Lem’s novels, interviews and correspondence. Most attention is devoted to Hospital of the Transfiguration, a novel that was the author’s first literary attempt to confront the experience of World War II. The knowledge about Lem’s life in German-occupied Lviv, significantly expanded due to biographical research from recent years (especially thanks to the books of Agnieszka Gajewska and Wojciech Orliński), made it possible to link the “food cipher” noticed in this novel with the most painful experience of war extermination that was carefully hidden by Lem. Some ideas of Michel Foucault and Emmanuel Lévinas, as well as the concept of “messianic vitalism” developed by Agata Bielik-Robson, turn out to be helpful in understanding the particular thanatic-alimentary coupling in Lem’s work.

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