EN
In her analysis of Kazimierz Brandys’s novels the author focuses on war and wartime as experience and “non-experience” in the perspective of Polish heroic myth and anti-civilian paradigm. In Polish culture romantic and heroic paradigm has substantial influence on the form of masculinity. Experience in this article is a metaphor, which includes participation in a war as a soldier. “Non-experience” in this perspective situates men on the margins of heroic culture. It further shows limitations of heroic culture and revises heroic tradition.