Krzyki i szepty. Poeci i magnetofon
Screams and Whispers. Poets vs tape recorder

Summary/Abstract: The paper is an attempt at comparative analysis of Miron Białoszewski poems read to a tape recorder (mainly later poems, e.g. from the Detach Oneself [Odczepić się] cycle) and Aleksander Wat's Whispers to a Tape Recorder [Naszepty Magnetofonowe]). The two major poets of the Polish 20th century avant-garde, though of different generations, whisper their most personal poems to a tape recorder and the creative process somehow is forced by their situation: sickness, suffering, feeling of exclusion, nearness of death... Their poems, however, “meet” on the level of poetics, style, intense use of metaphors. They also uncover a metaphysical space. The essay has a wishful conclusion that, apart from Ryszard Nycz's project to write a history of modernist literature from the angle of poetics of experience, a history of modernist poetry as a history of voice, the voice of poets, is possible.

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