„Pamięć garbata, pamięć kaleka..." O Grze z ogniem Andrzeja Szczypiorskiego
„Hunchbacked memory, faint memory..." About »Gra z ogniem« (A Play with Fire) by Andrzej Szczypiorski

Author(s): Grażyna Maroszczuk
Subject(s): Polish Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Andrzej Szczypiorski
Summary/Abstract: The article is an attempt at interpreting a novel entitled A Play with Fire written by Andrzej Szczypiorski. This novel was published shortly before the death of the writer. After ten years from the publication of Początek (The Beginning), the author addresses his new work to a reader who is already familiar with his previous novel and who will link the facts, which search for mutual references. It not only concerns the recognizable thematic references. The location of the novel in the context of the poetics of action novel and other schemes of popular prose is determined through an openly realized convention. A report about the history of the gathering, based on the story of the narrator, is realized as a thread of an investigation in a case of finding the guilty - a seemingly arsonist of a city, in reality responsible for acts committed in the past. The most important thing gets lost in the reports of the course of talks: who is the guilty one. The trails finally become a presentation of the states of consciousness of the informers, not the searched „truth”. // These actions will determine the model of the game, which will be played by the author with the perceptive habits of the reader. The encounter of the heroes with the world of their own past and dilemmas of „here and now” obtains a character of a trial of forces, spectacular struggles, search for the key opening further unknowns in the world at the border of reality, dream and memory. The writer uses a view qualifying the reality in the categories of what is recognized and endangered with immediate obscurity. Memory turns out to be the only sanction, the only point, from which the heroes move onward and backward, in order to recover from the battles with reality, perceived in its threatening unambiguity. This reflection builds up memories, gathers arguments, which amplify within the determined oppositions. Such „hunches” of memory accompany the heroes in their struggle with the unexplainable range of reality. The nostalgic need of order and reference point is a value particularly exposed in the face of constant erosion of matters falling apart in front of the reader.

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