OBRAZY PRZEMIAN MATERII W PISARSTWIE LEO LIPSKIEGO W KONTEKŚCIE ALCHEMICZNEJ KONCEPCJI MATERIA PRIMA
THE IMAGES OF MATTER CHANGES IN LEO LIPSKI’S WRITINGS IN THE CONTEXT OF ALCHEMICAL CONCEPT OF MATERIA PRIMA

Author(s): Mateusz Pytko
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: abject; alchemy; Bataille; gnosis; Mann; materia prima
Summary/Abstract: From the beginning of his creative work, Leo Lipski struggled with a problem that could be described as follows: how can matter be included in the language corpus in such a way that when it is literally translated it will not become unreal. He expressed this exceptionally “materialistic” approach to the process of shaping words in one of the letters to Michał Chmielowiec, where he wrote: “even the most sublime creative work is of the same flesh and blood as anything people create. […] in general all creative work means one thing to me: struggling with matter, with material.” Researchers of Lipski’s work tried to link such ideological declarations and their creative realisations with Georges Bataille’s concept of the informe. The article shows that the concepts close to the informe as well as Lipski’s dream to sublime “fertilizer” into something “alive” has a rich history dating back to at least the third century AD. One of the interpretative aims of the text is to show that creative images Lipski adhered to are secularized equivalents of the alchemical concept of materia prima. The article also analyses the images, symbols and allegories Lipski used to express the transformation process of this multiform and paradoxical (simultaneously live and dead) matter he chose as his object of creative sublimation.

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