CATASTROPHISM AND 'THE IRON BATTERY OF MODERNITEE': S.O.S. (SAVE OUR SOULS!) BY JALU KUREK

• Authors: Wojtowicz A.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Jalu Kurek's novel 'S.O.S.' (Save Our Souls!), published in 1927, dramatizes the experience of modernity through a collision of two radically opposed ideologies. The catastrophic worldview is represented by the main character, while the voice of a progressive avant-garde rings out from the expository narrative. The juxtaposition of the two mindsets is but one facet of a battle of interpretations over modernization, a process which was perceived by the contemporaries as a clash of worlds. While filling in this epic contour, Kurek unfortunately appears to rely too much on journalistic clichés and a black-and-white schematism. Eventually, however, the portrait of modernity in 'S.O.S'. is saved from oversimplification.The hard frontlines of avant-garde modernity and the anti-modern cultural pessimists are softened by the perception that the contemporary epoch is full of contradictions and dramatic divisions. The vision created by Jalu Kurek in his first two novels ('S.O.S.' and 'Who Was Andrzej Panik?') can well be summed up in Marshall Berman's formula of the 'heroism of modern life', ie. a brand of heroism that is acted out in conflict-ridden everyday life. Drawing indirectly on the character of the 'flâneur' (as characterized by Baudelaire), Kurek ventures in search of such conflicts into the streets of Cracow and depicts urban life in a manner reminiscent of the French avant-garde (Cendrars, Appolinaire, Aragon) or the German practitioners of the 'Neue Sachlichkeit'. Outwardly detached, he shares in fact the avant-garde belief that the conflicts he encounters are the products of the inner dynamics of the modern era rather than manifestations of a world in decline.

Keywords

EN

AVANT-GARDE FICTION (INTERWAR PERIOD); KUREK JALU ('S.O.S.'); POLISH LITERATURE (20TH C.)

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk
• Journal: Ruch Literacki
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 49
• Issue: 2(287)
• Pages: 199-214
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Wojtowicz A.

• A. Wojtowicz, Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej w Lublinie, Zaklad Literatury Wspólczesnej, pl. M. Curie-Sklodo0wskiej 4, 20-031 Lublin, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

08PLAAAA04799134