Niebezpieczne związki – „Baśnie i psalmodie” Marii Komornickiej
Dangerous Relationships – On Maria Komornicka’s “Fairy-tales and Psalmodies”

Summary/Abstract: The sketch offers a psychoanalytical and gender interpretation of Maria Komornicka’s two fairy-tales “On Father and His Daughter” and “Andronic” from her 1900 collection “Fairy-tales and Psalmodies”. The theme of the former is a woman’s violation by patriarchal structures of her family and father–daughter pathological relationship, and the latter – a toxic love relationship with a possessive desperado partner who reminds of Jan Lemański. To continue with the former fairy-tale, it is not only a story of a father and his daughter but even more vividly – of a mother and her daughter, and the tale’s surface intention (a monument to commemorate the honorable mother) contradicts the text’s latent message (the feeling of being deserted). The fairy-tale in question is no longer a rebellious narration as is the case with Komornicka’s earlier writings; a rebellious woman is replaced here with a lost one. “Andronice”, on the other hand, tells a different story about a servant and a tyrant, on his destructive and appropriating erotic lust and “her” (ostensible) revenge. By contrast, the slave, unlike the father dependent Alla from the first tale, chooses a different defense strategy. She turns not to being depressed but to aggression dressed into a modernistic “femme fatale”. This, however, fails to set her free. The interest of this sketch is not only Komornicka’s writings but also their relationship with the writer’s biography, illustrating not so much the reflection of biographical realities in the texts as analyzing of their structure and developing (not necessarily constructive) strategies to trace the writer’s later life

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