Antysemickie wątki w polskim kanonie literackim. Próba przekonstruowania problemu
“Anti-Semitic Threads in Polish Literary Canon”: An Attempt at Re-constructing the Issue

Summary/Abstract: The author makes attempt to re-construct the issue of threads which were considered anti-Semitic during a recent discussion on the Polish literary canon. The starting point is the construction of an excluded synthetic and diabolical Jew, one that was most completely represented in Sebastian Klonowic’s Worek Judaszów, and this construction is further reversed in A. Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz, with indication of the conditions for a character to be included. In turn, with Z. Krasiński’s Nie-boska komedia, I put an emphasis, on the one hand, on repeated ‘diabolic Jew’ construction whilst on the other, on the inclusion being radically called into question and the Jew being considered a ‘Wallenrodian’ intruder (intrusion). At last, on discussing B. Prus’s Lalka, I show, on the one hand, a diversity of included Jewish characters acting on the novel’s foreground, whilst a disdainfully treated synthetic Jew is moved back to the background (exclusion); on the other hand – in view of the failure of a solidaristic utopia in the novel’s volume 2 – exclusion is highlighted of figures representing certain values, which puts into question a social sense of inclusion.

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