EN
The article offers a reading of Tadeusz Peiper’s “Ma lat 22” (“He Is 22 Years Old”) in the context of René Girard’s desire of triangular relationship and Sigmund Freud’s and Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory. Peiper’s text, composed on the model of Bildungsroman, focuses on attempts of the main protagonist to construct a model of strong subjectivity which would be a core self-justifiable and free from any mediators around which a new existence in the modern world can be built. Releasing from the influence of successive mediators, the protagonist falls into narcissism that hinders the success of such endeavor.