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Interpreting Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s Tatarak

Author(s): Agata Zalewska
Subject(s): Media studies, Studies of Literature, Communication studies, Theory of Communication, Theory of Literature, Sociology of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: death; life; love; body; feelings
Summary/Abstract: The title’s “no biography” points directly to the aim of the paper, namely an interpretation of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s Tatarak [Calamus] that suspends the biographical context. This particular work in the writer’s oeuvre seems to require such a construal. When read – most often – as a text that is autobiographical or contains evident references to the writer’s biography, it loses its uniqueness. It thus becomes little more than an excuse for increasingly bold comparisons between the feelings of the protagonist, Marta, and the passion felt by Iwaszkiewicz himself from his infatuation with a much younger man. Meanwhile, the artistic magnitude of this short story by no means lies in any biographical context, but in the system of meanings it creates and utilises. Starting from the composition (including a story-within-a-story structure), through the portrayal of the characters, all the way to the significance of the title’s sweet-flag plant.

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