Złoto zaczęło płakać krwawymi łzami. Wokół motywów popiołu i złota w poezji Tadeusza Różewicza
“Gold Began to Weep Tears of Blood”. On the Motifs of Ashes and Gold in the Poetry of Tadeusz Różewicz

Summary/Abstract: A reflection about two central thematic figures and simultaneously two icons of the Holocaust: ashes and Jewish gold treated as a metonymy of movable and immovable Jewish property of which the victims were robbed both during the Nazi occupation and immediately in its wake. The author resorted to assorted sources (documents, the conspiracy and official press, testimonies of victims, literature) so as to to against a thus outlined historical and social background and inspired by the anthropology of culture depict the motif of ashes and gold in the poetry of Tadeusz Różewicz within the context of Polish writings dealing with the Holocaust. The presented text demonstrates just how deep Różewicz’s poetry is enrooted in historical experience and in Polish (predominantly Jerzy Ficowski) and European (Paul Celan) poetry associated with the Holocaust. The author portrays Różewicz’s works as one of the masterpieces of literary evidence of the annihilation of the Jews and proves that the poetic language of the author of recycling is an outstanding example of the social situation of post-Holocaust art embroiled in an aporia of sense and emptiness, representation and its prohibition, expressibility and inexpressibility, ineffableness and the imperative of testifying. It also becomes apparent that the drastic theme of the universal practice of desecrating the ashes of the victims while searching for Jewish gold, for years unmentioned in public discourse, was widely depicted in Polish literature already during the first post-war years. Złote żniwa by J. T. Gross and I. GrudzińskaGross is, therefore, by no means a novelty in Polish literature; on the contrary, it enters a terrain already recognised and described by poets and men of letters.

• Details
• Contents