Narracyjne wyrwy. Rozdwojony w sobie w świetle Dzienników z lat osiemdziesiątych Teodora Parnickiego

• Authors: Ireneusz Gielata

Title variants

EN

NARRATIVE GAPS. TEODOR PARNICKI’S NOVEL DIVIDED IN ONESELF IN THE LIGHT OF HIS DIARIES FROM 1980S

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The article presents the motif of ‘narrative gaps’, empty spaces marked by ellipsis which appear in Teodor Parnicki’s novel Rozdwojony w sobie (Divided in One-self). The author searches for the explanation of the problem in the writer’s Diaries (Dzienniki z lat osiemdzieciątych. Notatki o własnej pracy twórczej / Diaries from the 1980s. Notes on my own cretaive work) in which the novelist offered a detailed description of all the phases of writing the novel. Parnicki’s Diaries show that, while it was being written, the novel gradually ceased to satisfy its author, who often succumbed to ‘great weariness’. In those states of ‘great weariness’ the ‘gaps’ in the novel – which presented a (re)structured narrative about Athanagild – appeared. It turns out that the writer had been using the ‘gaps’ before (Nowa Baśń / The New Fable, Sekret trzeciego Izajasza / The Secret of the Third Isaiah) describing them as a kind of artistic escape, resulting from the inability to continue a certain plot or as a narrative device leading to an unmotivated ‘leap’ between motifs, the ‘leap’ unmotivated by the narrative itself. Hence, a ‘gap’ is in fact a textual lacuna indicating the lack of a link between narratives, motifs and plots in Parnicki’s novels. At the same time, however, it is a symptom of ‘weariness’ of the author, who, in the last years of his life, was unable to meticulously plan every thread of his novel. Three ellipses in the third chapter of Rozdwojony w sobie (Divided in Oneself) are such arbitrary ‘leaps’ from one motif to another. Yet, according to the interpretation suggested in the Diaries, such ‘gaps’ should be perceived as a result of two simultaneous forces – weariness and madness. Author’s weariness leads to unintentional effect of repetition i.e. returning to the motifs that possess author’s imagination. Hence, the textual ‘gap’ is a kind of a hole, through which one can observe the elements the author had repressed. These elements resurface in the moments of weakness forcing him to take narrative ‘leaps’. They are not narrative evasions or symptoms of creative weakness of the old and ill writer but a sign of the ‘uncanny’ (in Freud’s terms) influencing the writer’s work.

Keywords

EN

TEODOR PARNICKI’S DIVIDED IN ONESELF; LITERARY JOURNAL

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Bielsko-Bialski
• Journal: Świat i Słowo
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1(20)
• Pages: 101-112

Dates

published

2013-06

Contributors

author

Ireneusz Gielata

• Akademia Techniczno-Humanistyczna w Bielsku-Białej, ul. Willowa 2, 43-309 Bielsko-Biała

References

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• T. Parnicki, Rozdwojony w sobie, Warszawa 1983.
• Z. Freud, Niesamowite, tłum. R. Reszke, [w:] tenże, Pisma psychologiczne, Warszawa 1997.
• I. Gielata, Nad studnią Ateny. O „Rozdwojonym w sobie” Teodora Parnickiego, Bielsko-Biała, 2006.
• Z. Freud, Wyparcie (1915), [w:] tenże, Psychologia nieświadomości. Dzieła, t. VIII, tłum. R. Reszke, Warszawa 2007.
• T. Markiewka, O Autorze i jego Dziennikach, [w:] T. Parnicki, Dzienniki z lat osiemdziesiątych…