The beating heart of chiasmus: literature and life. The experience of writing in the works of Edmond Jabès and Aleksander Wat

• Authors: Paszek Paweł

Title variants

PL

Bijące serce chiazmu: litera i życie. Doświadczenie pisania u Edmoda Jabesa i Aleksandra Wata

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

This article is a an attempt to describe a peculiar experience of literature understood as a deeply existential experience of life. The works of the French poet Edmond Jabès and the Polish writer Aleksander Wat are an example of the literary works which are strongly associated with the lives of their authors - with their life stories and experiences. These two writers perceive the process of writing as an activity which is directly related to the organic process of existence, which can not only be deduced from their poems and prose works, but also from their comments on their own writings included in journals, interviews and discussions. They both experienced World War II which was a kind of a mental turning point resulting in even closer relationship between their literary works and life. The demand to introduce life into literary arts advanced by Jabès and Wat derived from the avant-garde background in which both of them had been maturing, and the borderline experience of war - both were partially assimilated Jews - led them to rejection of all strict ideologies, but also reinforced the imperative on literature as the defense and record of life. The works of Jabès and Wat are the examples of 20th century literature which can be described as an inseparable union of written matter and life, as the art of living itself. This reasoning is partly based on the anthropological considerations and the poetics of experience which identify literature and art as the specific arrangements of human experience, and also as a particular spiritual exercise.

Keywords

EN

existential experience; writing; poetry; anthropology of literature

• Publisher: Wydział Filologiczny, Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach
• Journal: Anthropos?
• Year: 2013
• Issue: 20-21
• Pages: 249-262

Contributors

author

Paszek Paweł