Przekreślone, a następnie starte gumą
Crossed out and Later Erased

On the Rough Drafts of Władysław Broniewski’s “Anka” (“Annie”)

Summary/Abstract: In 1965 Władysław Broniewski published a collection “Anka” (“Annie”) that includes poems devoted to his deceased daughter. Linking the date with the time of political breakthrough led to believe that the elegy’s personal overtone is a declaration made by “the Polish People’s Republic leading poet” to depart from committed poetry. However, critics and reviewers discerned in some poems references to his socialist realist creativity. Feliksa Lichodziejewska, the main editor of Broniewski’s pieces, discerned in the poems traces supporting the view that the poet eliminated or changed fragments of the initial version of the poems that later shaped this elegiac cycle. In such actions undertaken by Broniewski, the editor and also other critics disclosed the will to hide emotions and a plan to preserve the image of an unshaken poet-revolutionist. Presenting “Anka” (“Annie”) as a token of resigning from “formal optimism” characteristic of socialist realist literature, Lichodziejewska attempted to eradicate or to invalidate the proofs of Broniewski’s involvement into politically and historically compromised reality. Reading the elegiac cycle as an attempt to cut off from the past creativity effected in disregarding the poet’s past achievements and deprived the title character—a young director and documentary filmmaker Joanna Broniewska-Kozicka—of her voice. The fragments that the editor regarded as an expression of complete breaking up with the socialist realist convention were indeed allusions to the previous poems or conversations with the daughter. Kozicka’s premature death a while before the Polish October 1956 resulted in her “getting stuck” in time.

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