Polska moich rodziców

• Authors: Tadeusz Sobolewski

Title variants

EN

POLAND OF MY PARENTS

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

”In 1956 Witold Gombrowicz predicted that once communism in Poland collapses, the Poles will be already changed and never return to their nineteenth-century national imagery. This prophecy pertains to my generation – but not to those of its members who today march in the costumes of the Piłsudskiites or the national democrats. I find both those traditions equally alien. And I much prefer the tradition of Wojtyła, Mazowiecki, Tischner, Kuroń and Michnik. (…) This vision of a martyred nation, associated with the suffering of Christ and bringing freedom to the whole world, has for two hundred years burdened the Polish consciousness in the manner of a phantom. The twentieth-century critics of this tradition – such as Czesław Miłosz – blame it for favouring national idolatry and the creation of a perverse megalomania of suffering and a cult of death. After 1956 the young generation wished to cast off this messianistic burden and to turn towards life. The same goal was pursued by successive Polish generations - the generation of ’68 and the Solidarity generation – in their efforts of curing themselves of the national complex in which an awareness of inferiority gives rise to megalomania” – wrote Tadeusz Sobolewski.

Keywords

EN

Memory of People’s Republic of Poland

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Konteksty - Polska Sztuka Ludowa
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 64
• Issue: 4(291)
• Pages: 49-51

Contributors

author

Tadeusz Sobolewski