W cieniu ojca. Awangarda prozatorska lat 30. XX wieku. Rudnicki, Napierski, Schulz, Tarn
In the Shadow of the Father. Avant-garde prose of the 1930s. Rudnicki / Napierski / Schulz / Tarn

Author(s): Magdalena Wasąg
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: Adolf Rudnicki; Stefan Napierski; Bruno Schulz; Adam Tarn; avant-garde prose; psychoanalysis; prose debuts of the 1930s Sigmund Freud; James Joyce; father’s phantasm
Summary/Abstract: Adolf Rudnicki, Stefan Napierski, Bruno Schulz, and Adam Tarn debuted as authors of prose in the 1930s. In their works they all took the complex subject of the father’s image. Interwar literary critique included these debuts in avant-garde literature, which was strongly influenced by Sigmund Freud’s concept of psychoanalysis and Ulysses by James Joyce. The psychologism that was noticed in Rudnicki’s Rats, in Napierski’s Conversation with the Shadow in Schulz’s stories, and in Tarn’s The image of the father in four frames was criticized at that time. Today, the interpretation of these avant-garde prose projects allows us to see their more general, intention. This monograph significantly reinterprets avant-garde projects which were distinguished by their innovative language and narrative forms. In historical and literary terms, it aims to show a more faithful, multifaceted image of the interwar period, in which in addition to “traditional literature” there will be space for a novel experiment. Until now, the relationship between the works of Rudnicki, Napierski, Schulz and Tarn has not been noticed and it is in the works of these writers of Jewish origin that the ideas about the father, refer to tradition. The prose debuts of Rudnicki, Napierski, Schulz and Tarn have become a kind of timeless question: Will avant-garde literary projects create a new man, a son not burdened by the “father’s shadow”, by a “blemish” of his origins. In the interwar period, for Jewish writers, this was a particularly important question, and it affects every text interpreted in this monograph to varying degrees.

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