eprintid: 10105488
rev_number: 19
eprint_status: archive
userid: 608
dir: disk0/10/10/54/88
datestamp: 2020-07-20 08:05:12
lastmod: 2021-10-23 02:03:22
status_changed: 2020-07-20 08:05:12
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Zechenter, K
title: From “Poland’s Genius” to the World as “a living, single entity:” World, Literature and Writer’s Duty in Lectures of Polish Laureates of Nobel Prize in Literature (1905-2019)
ispublished: pub
divisions: UCL
divisions: B03
divisions: D92
keywords: modern Polish litrature, non-anthropocentrism, Nobel Prize in Literature, Olga Tokarczuk, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Wislawa Szymborska, Czeslaw Milosz, Władysław Reymont
note: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
abstract: Reading the Nobel Prize Lectures delivered by Polish Nobel laureates in literature from 1905 to 2019 as one mutually influencing narrative (the so-called “collective narrative”) clearly suggests the changing direction of how Polish writers perceive the world, Poland, and the social obligations of literature towards humanity. The early focus on Poland’s loss of independence and the injustice of fate (Henryk Sienkiewicz) gave way to seeing the entire world as a unity (Wisława Szymborska, Czesław Miłosz, Olga Tokarczuk). The mutually exclusive participation in life and being a detached observer. although seen as an insolvable contradiction (Miłosz) is acknowledged. but now with the urgent need for an engagement with the world’s fate (Szymborska, Tokarczuk). Literature is seen as a vehicle for painful memory and the acknowledgment of the injustices of the twentieth century (Miłosz), a tool of analysis of the human and non-human condition in general (Szymborska), and as a way of telling stories that represents the only remaining path to universal human understanding and bond (Tokarczuk). For Tokarczuk, “the tender narrator” represents the powerful connection necessary for searching for meaning and interhuman communication in the face of an approaching danger of the destruction of the world by humans.
date: 2021-03-01
date_type: published
publisher: the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America in New York and the University of Illinois Press and Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
official_url: https://doi.org/10.5406/polishreview.66.2.0128
oa_status: green
full_text_type: other
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
elements_id: 1798374
doi: 10.5406/polishreview.66.2.0128
lyricists_name: Zechenter, Katarzyna
lyricists_id: KZECH17
actors_name: Zechenter, Katarzyna
actors_id: KZECH17
actors_role: owner
full_text_status: public
publication: The Polish Review
volume: 66
number: 2
pagerange: 128-145
event_location: United States
citation:        Zechenter, K;      (2021)    From “Poland’s Genius” to the World as “a living, single entity:” World, Literature and Writer’s Duty in Lectures of Polish Laureates of Nobel Prize in Literature (1905-2019).                   The Polish Review , 66  (2)   pp. 128-145.    10.5406/polishreview.66.2.0128 <https://doi.org/10.5406/polishreview.66.2.0128>.       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10105488/1/2020.Tokarczuk.Nobel.K.Zechenter.pdf