Maria, Maryjka, Maryja. Figura intymizacji Gardzienic w kobiecym dyskursie „Gardzienic”
Maria, Maryjka, Maryja. The Intimacy Figure of the Gardzienice on the Female Discourse of the „Gardzienice”

Summary/Abstract: The article presents an analysis and an interpretation of the story of Maria of Gardzienice, a local folk artist: an embroiderer, a painter and a specifically understood performer, now deceased, but also forgotten during her life and living alone in the village near Lublin. This story has been told by „an actress” from „the «Gardzienice» Theatre” in the course of my fieldwork in Gardzienice village on the 30th of June 2012. During this field interview, a unique in its lyrical formula, a symbolic and a creative spiritual biography of Maria of Gardzienice was established. This story creates a specific „apocrypha” of femininity understood as an aesthetic lifestyle of a creative women, a socially self-excluding „artist” – an amateur, wanting to create outside the patriarchal community of the village. Maria, a real woman from the village, in the story of the „actress from „the «Gardzienice» Theatre” appears at the same time as: Maryjka – a goddess and Mary – the Blessed Virgin Mary. This story is the figure of an intimacy female discourse of Gardzienice village on” „the «Gardzienice» Theatre”. It constitutes a symbolic escape into the mythologisation of femininity as a creative response of the women from Gardzienice village and the women from „the «Gardzienice Theatre»” on the local social conflict between „the village” and „the Theatre”. The „actress „ who verbalises this story, makes a symbolic identification with Maria – the „artist” from the Gardzienice village and in this way essentialistically formulated femininity is a symbolic way of escapism of the women from the local conflict.

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