„Ciąży na mnie [...] obowiązek wierności”
Teodor Parnicki’s Letters to Jan and Marta Erdman from the Years 1944–1946

Teodor Parnicki’s Letters to Jan and Marta Erdman from the Years 1944–1946

Summary/Abstract: The published material is a critical study of a collection of 16 letters which Teodor Parnicki (1908–1988) wrote between 1944 and 1946 from Mexico to Jan Erdman (1906–1986) and his wife Marta (1921–1982) to the United States of America. They give an insight into the writer’s condition in the earliest years of his almost 15 year stay on the North American continent and show the problems he faced after he stopped working in the Polish Embassy in Mexico where he held the position of cultural attaché. They also represent his assessment of the political situation which took place in Poland after the World War II. First and foremost they uncover his deepest motives that influenced his decision to remain an emigrant. They are viewed as a kind of artistic independence manifesto as well as a sign of fidelity to Polish literary tradition and a writer’s vocation. One can follow the writer at work in this period of his creative life, during which, developing various plots with a growing feeling of solitude, he was earnestly striving to renew the historical novel as a literary genre. The outcomes of such endeavours are the first part of “Słowo i ciało (Word and Flesh)” and “Koniec “Zgody Narodów” (The End of the “Concord of Nations”).”

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