NOSTALGICZNY POWRÓT HENRYKA GRYNBERGA DO UTRACONEGO DZIECIŃSTWA

• Authors: Balcerzak Alicja

Title variants

EN

HENRYK GRYNBERG’S NOSTALGIC RETURN TO THE LOST CHILDHOOD

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The work of Henryk Grynberg is an example of the nostalgia of individual experi-ence, which was determined by traumatic war experiences. The author, as an adult man, returns the same way back to his childhood. The past is what Grynberg is constantly struggling with. The writer recreates the past by restoring the image irretrievably lost. In Sielanka Siaj’s story, Grynberg recalls the world of childhood before the war, this is the only text of this author presenting a picture of joyful childhood. In this piece important fragments of stories about the announcement of the catastrophe, which was the holo-caust, are highlighted. The Holocaust, which is the background of the story, is expressed in subtext, and remains almost invisible. The fate of the main character will continue in the novel entitled The Jewish War, but still, in there, a small boy will experience dilemmas of identity. The whole novel deals with the fate of the Jewish family during the German occupation of Poland. The book was divided into two parts, which follow in chronological order according to the events. Why was the story of the fate of one Jewish family divided in such a way? It is because there were two different ways to save yourself from oppression at the time described. The differences in opinions were visible among people close to the narrator: husband and wife, father and mother. The Jewish War is a tragic story, because it shows the difficulty of the choices, the moral dilemmas that take place in the minds of the characters in the novel. The whole life of the characters portrayed was a lie, a mystification. Not only were their words untrue, the greatest fraud was their very existence at that time. The autobiographical text is portraying the paralyzing fear of the past. We have the right to interpret the texts of Grynberg at three possible levels: personal experiences, generalized form of the fate of the Jewish people and existential reflection, which seeks terms for man in general. Both novels belong to the second wave of postwar literature. In this context, the authors attempted to capture the realities of the war in the perspective of the passage of time. Those authors wrote the main topic as a record of the artistic process, not to describe their own experiences, but to formulate deep judgments based on polemic despair caused by the holocaust.

Keywords

PL

Holokaust; tożsamość żydowska; nostalgia; pamięć poholokaustowa; Henryk Grynberg

EN

Holocaust; Jewish identity; nostalgia; post-Holocaust memory; Henryk Grynberg

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Naukowe AP
• Journal: Świat Tekstów. Rocznik Słupski
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 16
• Pages: 109-118
• Physical description: oryginalny tekst naukowy

Dates

published

2019-02-03

Contributors

author

Balcerzak Alicja

• Akademia Pomorska w Słupsku

References

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