The Autobiographical Triangle

Front matter

CROSS-ROADS. POLISH STUDIES IN CULTURE, LITERARY THEORY, AND HISTORY 14

Małgorzata Czermińska

Witness, Confession, Challenge

Part One Three Autobiographical Stances

Literature Ot Fact wa tanio A AAAA 22 n E AOR ACRE 26

2. The Autobiographical Triangle: Witness, Confession,

Challeng ano AAAA OOO A AWARD GAYA 29 The Rhetorical Sources of the Three Stances ssseissisroiiscirissireisisiirsisrosisiisii 34 Interchangeability of Autobiographical Stances oo... cece anna 38 Diaries after Gombrowicz cersronsnariioronoraronraioriionanoiikonan 51

Part Two Confessions, Confidences, Dreams

1. The Spiritual Autobiography in Twentieth-Century Polish

Literature sp inceniiernantonsiial iar n uence singe 61 The Mystical Autobiography 2... esa 64 The Spiritual Autobiography sissioni 67

Contents

GoRCIUSION „Naa AA O ALA ERA A O

Four Types of Intertextual Allusion varisinin

Part Three Witness Inscribed in Place

1. Autobiographical Places and the Topographic

The Topographic Imagination naserie

2. Home in the Autobiography and the Novel about Childhood OO AGO GO GA AA DAGA

Inside the House ada adi ai GA Ai Aa ba AŚ The Garden of Childhood sscsanssarinorsnarannanmranarernanans The Land of Childhood sss asa aż waz A Ed AG AA Arriving = Homecoming zaa aa AO Ba

The Death Knell for the Home of Childhood „o...n

. Larders of Memory: Transformations of the Borderland

A Hint of the Grotesque and the Invasion of History oo... An Attempt At Epic Distance: Towards a Deconstruction of the Myth ....

Contents 11

4. The Centre and the Borderland Periphery in the Prose of

5. Space Disturbed: Testimonies to the Post- Yalta “Migration of Peoples”

The End and the Beginning

Written Now, Written Then

Tińie and Space after Yalta aa aan a kiwa i EE 220 Enicounters with Foreign ness -sic.ss.sscissssvsciessestesssiessssnssessetsssavecisssessedosdecnssasveess 225 Jews Who Surviyed: osdscsi5cesiaiscedeseis nn ANO 228 Disturbances iin: the Centre ai AG 229

Part Four Testimonies Inscribed in Historical Time: Challenges 1. “Speaking a Memoir”: Janusz Korczak’s Autobiographical

Stance ua GORA GSO Ani GOO AGE 233 The Role of the Personal in Korczaks Writing 0.0... ana 233 A Network of Four Oppositions 0... esse 239

2. How to Write about the Sins of Ones Youth or a Year with

The Long Shadow of Stalinism sasssasscasniisasiiiniiaiicaniianiianis 251

12 Contents

Flaw, Shame; Reckoning .isisssscsccsacsessvescuscusonsostesvssonssdvacesssvsocvscuvensesissessosssdvscens 261 Tyrmands Triumphal Return In Diary 1954 eee 265 The Great Debate on the Authenticity of Diary 1954 wees 269

Part Five On the Fringes of the Autobiographical Triangle: An

Epilogue in Three Parts 1; The Letter and thie Novell paco GK 279 The Letter and the Epistolary Novel... seen 281 The Reader of a Collection of Correspondence oo... cesses tesestesneees 285 Paradoxes of Intimate Expressió i sssssrsniannniin a 310

3. Metaphors of Autobiographical Writing in the

Autobiography as Translation |... 326 Autobiography as Ekphrasis: sssini 327 Autobiography as Encounteisen sumaa a 329 Selected Bibliography ooo GG dA 333

Introduction

The Theory of the Autobiographical Triangle as Work in Progress

The theory of the three autobiographical stances, witness, confession and challenge, took shape gradually as the outcome of interpretative studies of literary phenomena situated on the border between the novel and various forms of nonfiction prose. Although it is Polish literature that has supplied the vast majority of the material considered, my study is not limited to this alone. I also make reference in many places to European literature as an essential context for the particular literary pieces and genre forms analysed in this book, which are connected with a variety of aesthetic trends. If European tradition is understood more broadly than it was by Ernst Robert Curtius in his monumental study European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, in other words if it is not confined to the culture of Western Europe, then Polish literature undoubtedly belongs to this tradition. In this matter I stand firmly with Czesław Miłosz as the author of Native Realm,’ that is to say I understand the West as including the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as well as Russia, because the culture of this whole area arises from Mediterranean roots (though we should remember that Russia's origins are connected above all with the tradition of Greece and Byzantium). I see the particular differences between the literatures of individual nations and languages in the context of history, while literary theoretical conclusions (including the theory of the autobiographical triangle) are tested with reference to a variety of different literary phenomena which are all to be found within one cultural sphere, understood as European in the widest sense.

The literature of the twentieth century saw a series of experiments which went beyond the genre forms still practised (more or less distinctly) by prose writers of the nineteenth century. The rebellious experiments of the avant-garde in various fields of art during the first decades of the twentieth century led to a search in literature for new thematic areas and new forms of expression. Writers found material for their work in the sphere earlier defined as the border between art and life. This gradually turned out to be fertile soil for the development of autobiographical writing, which in any case had a tradition in European culture almost as long

1 Cz. Miłosz, Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition, trans. Catherine S. Leach (London: Penguin Books, 2014).

14 Introduction as that of literature itself. My studies, at first devoted to individual phenomena such as the relations between the letter and the novel, the intimate diary and the novel, or the novel and autobiography in its various versions, set me travelling along a road that led to the formulation of a literary theoretical hypothesis: that there is a phenomenon common to all written expressions whose origin is in the area between fiction and direct accounts of oneself and one’s own life experience. Many years of thought led me to the conviction that this phenomenon is universal in European culture; it is not dependent on the literary historical period or the language in which a work is written. Of course works that arise on the border between fiction and literature of personal document are subject to countless individual modifications along with changes in artistic trends and styles. But the thing that they all share, that is their functioning in that intermediate space between the freedom of fiction and the document that claims to be a faithful presentation of reality — this I named the autobiographical stance. To begin with I was persuaded that it appeared in two opposed versions: witness and confession. Further study, however, directed my attention to the existence of a third stance, which played a smaller role in the literature of past ages, but which was discerned even by theoreticians of ancient times, as can be seen in ancient rhetoric. I called this third stance “challenge”: challenge addressed to the reader. Since the modernist era, this stance has continued to evolve, and it now plays an increasingly important role.

Three stances, witness, confession and challenge, are always present, in varying proportions, in autobiographical texts. The universal character of these stances results from their grounding in the three functions of speech described by Karl Biihler, which also stand behind the distinctions made in ancient handbooks of rhetoric between presentation of reality, expression by the sender and appeal to the receiver. I discuss this in the first part of the book, where I present the theory which I metaphorically named the autobiographical triangle, at the same time revealing the stages of the journey by which I gradually arrived at this hypothesis. The texts which make up the book, originally written over the course of many years and then revised under the influence of new observations emerging in theoretical and interpretational studies, record that journey. I do not, of course, draw from the fact that all autobiographical texts can be written into the triangle of the three stances the exaggerated conclusion that every possible way of interpreting literature of personal document must also fit into these categories. Outside them, on their fringes and beyond, extensive fields remain to be investigated.

Before I arrived at the theory of the triangle, I concentrated particularly on the paradoxes connected with the presence (obvious or concealed) of the reader in various forms of autobiographical texts. As an epilogue to this book, I decided to

Introduction 15 include two studies devoted to these questions, because distinguishing the problem of the reader was a very important factor in the process by which I was able to discern and describe the stance of challenge, which is less obvious than those of witness and confession. These two studies, of epistolary writing and of diary writing, were a kind of laboratory in which I observed the way that the stance of challenge took shape. The third part of the epilogue, in turn, is the most recent of all the texts in the book. It was written after the theory of the autobiographical triangle had been completely formulated and made public. I nevertheless include it in this version of the book out of a sense that it grew out of my earlier work, although it opens on to new territory. The triangle holds firm (or so I hope), but work on the problem of autobiography continues; it is still “work in progress”.

This book was written in Polish; the first edition, entitled Autobiograficzny trójkąt. Świadectwo, wyznanie i wyzwanie, was published in Kraków by Universitas in 2000, in the series Horyzonty Nowoczesności [Horizons of Modernity]. The English-language version retains the basic five-part structure of the whole, but has undergone very significant changes in relation to the original. I have not only revised the footnotes to take account of recent scholarship, but have also considerably modified the contents of the book. One chapter has been removed; two others have been re-arranged and combined into one; yet another has changed its position; and two new chapters have been added which were written after the book’s original publication. All of these texts have been thoroughly re-worked and extended (sometimes with very considerable insertions) with a view to the English-speaking reader for whom the new version of the book is intended. These editorial transformations owe a great deal to the inspiration and suggestions of the translator, Jean Ward, a graduate of Oxford University who has worked for many years in Poland, is a scholar of two literatures and the author of academic texts in Polish as well as English. Her bilingual, comparatist and bicultural competences have been an inestimable aid to me, and for this I wish to express my unfailing gratitude.

Full bibliographical information about all the publications cited in this study can be found in the footnotes. A selected bibliography is included at the end of the book, listing only those primary and secondary texts which were of most importance to me in formulating and justifying the theory of autobiography as a “triangle” of three stances: witness, confession and challenge.

The earlier versions of individual chapters were published in the following books and journals:

* “The field of non-fiction prose’, as "Obszar prozy niefikcjonalnej”, Part I of “Badania nad prozą niefikcjonalną — sukcesy, pułapki, osobliwości”, in: Wiedza

16 Introduction x o literaturze i edukacja. Księga referatów Zjazdu Polonistów, Warszawa 1995, ed. T. Michałowska, Z. Goliński, Z. Jarosiński (Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, 1996).

Fragments of "The Autobiographical Triangle: Witness, Confession, Challenge” as "Autobiografia jako wyzwanie (O „Dzienniku” Gombrowicza)”, Teksty Drugie 1994, no. 1 (25).

“The Spiritual Autobiography in Twentieth-Century Polish Literature, as "Autobiografia duchowa w dwudziestowiecznej literaturze polskiej”, in: Proza polska w kręgu religijnych inspiracji, ed. M. Jasińska-Wojtkowska and K. Dybciak (Lublin: Tow. Nauk. Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1993). “Intertextual Connections in the Spiritual Autobiography, as "Nawiązania międzytekstowe w autobiografii duchowej, in: Między tekstami. Intertekstualność jako problem poetyki historycznej, ed. J. Ziomek, J. Sławiński, W. Bolecki (Warszawa: Polskie Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1992). “Autobiographical Places and the Topographic Imagination: on the Relations Between Place and Identity, as "Miejsca autobiograficzne. Propozycja w ramach geopoetyki’, Teksty Drugie 2011, no. 5.

"Home in the Autobiography and the Novel About Childhood as "Dom w autobiografii i powieści o dzieciństwie, in: Przestrzeń i literatura, ed. M. Głowiński and A. Okopień-Sławińska (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1978). “Larders of Memory: Transformations of the Borderland Theme in the Autobiographical Novel”, as "Przemiany tematu kresowego. Idylla, tragizm, groteska w twórczości Zbigniewa Żakiewicza”, Tytuł 1999, no. 1 (33). “The Centre and the Borderland Periphery in the Prose of Writers Born after World War IP, as “Centrum i kresy w prozie pisarzy urodzonych po wojnie” in: Pogranicza, granice, ograniczenia, ed. E. Rzewuska (Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 1996).

“Space Disturbed. Testimonies to the Post-Yalta ‘Migration of Peoples”, as “Poruszona przestrzeń. Autobiograficzne świadectwa okresu przełomu, in: Konteksty polonistycznej edukacji, ed. M. Kwiatkowska-Ratajczak and S. Wysłouch (Poznań: Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne, 1998).

“Speaking a Memoir”: Janusz Korczak's Autobiographical Stance’, as “ Mówić pamiętnik (o postawie autobiograficznej Janusza Korczaka)”, in: Janusz

Korczak. Pisarz - wychowawca - myśliciel, ed. H. Kirchner (Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich, 1997).

“How to Write About the Sins of Ones Youth, or A Year with Konwicki, A Year

with Miłosz, as “Rok z Konwickim, rok z Miloszem’, Teksty Drugie 1995, no. 5 (35).

«c

Introduction 17

“The Provocative Testimony of Leopold Tyrmand”, as “Leopold Tyrmand - głos świadka, Rocznik Towarzystwa Literackiego im. A. Mickiewicza, XXVIII/1993. “The Letter and the Novel’, as Pomiędzy listem a powieścią, Teksty 1975, no. 4 (22).

“The Role of the Reader in the Intimate Diary’, as “Rola odbiorcy w dzienniku intymnym” in: Problemy odbioru i odbiorcy, ed. T. Bujnicki and J. Sławiński (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1977).

“Metaphors of Autobiographical Writing in the Perspective of Co-Humanism, as "Autobiografia i metafory”, in: Projekt na daleką metę. Prace ofiarowane Ryszardowi Nyczowi, ed. Z. Łapiński, A. Nasiłowska (Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, 2016).

Part One Three Autobiographical Stances

1. The Field of Non-Fiction Prose

What became of literature in the twentieth century? What became of the stories for which listeners and readers have always longed, the tales that, by the mouths of their bards, their novelists and storytellers, people from time immemorial have always told?

In his Social History of Art, written in the mid-twentieth century, Arnold Hauser described his times as the age of film. From today’s perspective, we can surely see that he was right: the twentieth century was indeed the age of film and television. Electronic audiovisual media have come to eclipse literature, yet they nevertheless still need it; they continue to draw on its heroes and on shreds of its storylines. For the literary scholar, the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth is the era of the novel. After that, rivals enter the stage and as time passes they become increasingly dominant. The documentary appears in large circulation press and subsequently enters the book market, where it competes successfully for readers’ attention, along with other genres of non-fiction prose such as biographies and memoirs. In the system of connecting vessels that is culture, it is impossible not to notice the pressure exerted by these so-called border or paraliterary forms on the traditional centre where the genres of high literature are concentrated.' The novel, undoubtedly the leader among prose genres, is undergoing deep inner transformations which are partly linked with what is happening on the fringes of literature.

The need to examine non-fiction prose more closely, with regard to both the mutual relations with traditional literary genres and the instrinsic worth of this kind of writing, has long been acknowledged. The English distinction between fiction and non-fiction is one of the most basic, as much in academic textbooks as in the practice of literary life. A similar dychotomy is assumed in film theory and criticism, which distinguishes between documentaries and feature films (with a tacit identification of the “feature” aspect with fictionality).

How is one to find ones way in the domain of non-fiction literature? Is it reasonable to consider it as a whole, given that we have no positive term to describe its characteristic features? The expression we use is a negative one, telling us what this kind of prose literature is not: it is not fiction. One might of course recall

1 For a discussion of this phenomenon, see R. Nycz, Sylwy współczesne. Problem konstrukcji tekstu (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1984) and Z. Ziątek, Wiek dokumentu. Inspiracje dokumentarne w polskiej prozie współczesnej (Warszawa: IBL, 1999).

22 The Field of Non-Fiction Prose that nothing unites so well as a common enemy, an adage which proves its relevance not only in relation to the name, but also in explaining the history of the thing itself. As far as this is concerned, there is almost universal agreement: nonfiction prose in the twentieth century is defined in a certain sense in opposition to the novel. Its success is connected with “the crisis of the novel”; it is nourished by “the death of the novel”; it is read “instead of the novel”? Equally, studies of such prose frequently define themselves in relation to the theory of the novel (including the general generic problem of narrative forms) and theories of fiction and fictionality. Indeed, there is perhaps no real need for one single definition conceived in such a manner as to cover the whole multiplicity and variety of phenomena that go by the name of non-fiction prose. Undoubtedly, rather than attempting to provide an all-embracing definition, a more important thing is to describe the field in question and the varieties and distinctions within it. In the field of non-fiction prose, we can discern three areas that border on one another, but differ in character and in the way they function in literary communication. These are literature of fact, literature of personal document and essays.

Literature of Fact

This term, which first appeared in the interwar period, initially had a kind of manifesto character, being connected with the proletarian literature agenda drawing on ideas proclaimed by “Nowyj LEF” in Russia, by the “New Objectivity” (“Neue Sachlichkeit”) programme in Germany and by the “authenticity” movement in Poland. While this tendency had its consequences for the poetics of the novel, the definition itself (“literature of fact”) came gradually to be associated with documentary. Later, in post-war journalism, literary criticism and subsequently literary theory, the term was applied to documentary writing of various kinds, as well as to other forms of a documentary character, such as chronicles and reports.”

2 W.Kayser, “Entstehung und Krise des modern Romans’, in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschriften fiir Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte XXVIII, 1954.4; T. Burek, Zamiast powieści (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1971), especially the part entitled “Rabek pamiętnika”; E. Balcerzan, “Powracająca fala autobiografizmu” and “Wtajemniczenia reporterskie” in his: Kręgi wtajemniczenia. Czytelnik. Badacz. Tłumacz. Pisarz (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1982); J. Kandziora, Zmeczeni fabułą. Narracje osobiste w prozie po 1976 roku (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1993).

3 A. Wat, “Literatura faktu, Wiadomości Literackie 1929. 35; K. Kąkolewski, "Wokół estetyki faktu, Studia Estetyczne 1965 vol. 2; A. Hutnikiewicz, “Autentyzm’, in his Od czystej formy do literatury faktu. Główne teorie i programy literackie XX stulecia

Literature of Fact 23

Where historical events are concerned, it is not uncommon for documentary writings to become embroiled in some entirely independent drama not invented by the writer but caused by the extraordinariness of the situation in which he or she is involved. In such circumstances, the tension vested in the events can impart a social importance to the text, making it capable of functioning among a wider public audience. Examples of this phenomenon would include Emmanuel Ringelblum’s Kronika [Chronicle] (a collection of records documenting life in the Warsaw ghetto, which were hidden within it and fortunately survived), Władysław Bartoszewskis 1859 dni Warszawy [Warsaw’s 1859 Days] (reconstructed after the war from documents chronicling daily life in the city during the Nazi occupation) and Kazimierz Moczarski's Conversations with an Executioner. (As an officer of the Polish underground army, Moczarski was imprisoned by the communists after the war. He found himself in the same cell as SS general Jiirgen Stroop, the “executioner” of the Warsaw ghetto, and after his release he wrote a record of his conversations with this war criminal.) Accounts collected by sociologists or ethnographers concerning everyday life could also become attractive as literature, if we look at social processes not from the point of view of public history, but in relation to the story of ordinary daily life. Above all, however, the extremely dynamic and distinctive development of documentary,° which shaped a range of new varieties, attaining at its best a remarkable

(Warszawa: "Wiedza Powszechna, 1974, II edition); J. Jarzębski, “Kariera autentyku” and “Powieść jako autokreacja” in his Powieść jako autokreacja (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1984); Z. Ziątek, “Autentyzm rozpoznań społecznych” in Literatura polska 1918-1975, ed. A. Brodzka and S. Żółkiewski (Warszawa: “Wiedza Powszechna, 1993), vol. 2.

4 E. Ringelblum, Kronika getta warszawskiego: wrzesień 1939 - styczeń 1943, edited with introduction by A. Eisenbach; translated from Yiddish by A. Rutkowski (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1983); Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: the Journal of Emmanuel Ringelblum, translated and edited by J. Sloan (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1958); W. Bartoszewski, 1859 dni Warszawy (Kraków: Znak, 1974); K. Moczarski, Rozmowy z katem, foreword by F. Ryszka (Warszawa: PIW, 1977); Conversations with an Executioner, ed. Mariana Fitzpatrick (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1981).

5 See M. Głowiński, “Dokument jako powieść in Studia o narracji, ed. J. Błoński, S. Jaworski, J. Sławiński (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1982).

6 J. Maziarski, Anatomia reportażu (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1996); Cz. Niedzielski, O teoretycznoliterackich tradycjach prozy dokumentarnej (podróż - powieść — reportaż) (Toruń: TNT, 1966); E. Kraskowska, “O międzywojennej kobiecej prozie reportażowej in her: Piórem niewieścim. Z problemów prozy kobiecej dwudziestolecia międzywojennego (Poznań: Wydaw. Naukowe UAM, 1999).

24 The Field of Non-Fiction Prose literary level, powerfully affected the situation of the novel and assured an increasing role to literature of fact.

Literature of Personal Document

This term, as a definition of the whole field of autobiographical writing in all its generic variations, was coined by Roman Zimand, who adapted a term taken from sociology, “personal document’, for the use of literary studies.’ This term is more accurate than others that were in use earlier, but were similar in range and meaning, such as “autobiographical writing’, “intimate writing’, “autobiographical and epistolary forms” or “personal writing”.

The “documentariness” of diaries, memoirs, autobiographies and letters draws them towards literature of fact, while the personal elements that they contain pull in the opposite direction. For literature of fact by definition tends towards impartiality, and strives to avoid subjectivity by concentrating on the object of interest. However, the line that separates literature of fact from literature of personal document cannot be drawn with complete certainty, as scholars — as well as writers — on both sides of this border admit. There are reporters, like Melchior Wankowicz, whose temperament leaves an ineradicable personal mark on every sentence. There are diary writers, like Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski, whose ideal is to conceal themselves behind the text of the journal.

The inner tensions in the literature of personal document were already a matter for discussion even before the name itself emerged. Attention had been drawn to the difference between the stance of the witness (usually very clear in recollections and memoirs) and the attitude of introspection and confession (observable especially in the journal intime and certain kinds of letter). However, there was no attempt at any strict generic categorisation of the defined types of stance. The authorial stance makes itself felt above all in the shaping of the narrative perspective and may be modelled to a certain extent independently of genre convention.

Roman Zimand, like earlier scholars, distinguishes two stances, which he calls “eye-witness” and “writing directly of oneself”. However, he does not trace the consequences that flow from the huge range of possibilities latent in the stance of the witness. Meanwhile, to read a variety of autobiographical testimonies is to become aware that the more the personal note is muted and the more strongly

7 R.Zimand, “O literaturze dokumentu osobistego w ogóle a o diarystyce w szczególności”, Diarysta Stefan Z. (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1990), 6-45.

Literature of Personal Document 25 the accent falls on the conveying of facts, the more the eye of the witness tends to be replaced by the “camera eye”. As a result, what is created becomes documentary rather than diary or memoir: in other words, literature of personal document turns into literature of fact.

The stances of confession and of witness are thus situated at two opposite poles of one line, where “I” stands facing “the world”. In the mid-twentieth century this opposition (which in fact is simple only in theoretical generalisation, never in writerly practice) became more complicated, especially in the field of the diary. If we keep to the geometrical analogy, we might say that a third point appeared, apart from the two opposed ones, and so instead of a line we must imagine a triangle, in which the apex, which differs from both “T” and “the world’, is “you”: the reader. Of course it is not the case that this figure emerged out of nowhere and only in recent times. In epistolary writing, a reader, openly present in the structure of the text, was implied from the very beginning; a reader was also inscribed in the memoir or autobiography, for example as the heir to whom the writer of the memoir or autobiography addressed his or her reflections. There was also always a reader latent in the diary, in the eternal paradox of intimate expression, which rests in the fact that absolute confidence is possible only in silence. Verbal expression, even when hedged about with every kind of reservation, by definition entails a risk of falling into unfriendly hands, and must therefore in some way take account of a reader.

The new thing that we are concerned with here, then, is not a matter of introducing the figure of the reader to personal writing, but of drawing this figure out of the shadows, and indeed right into the foreground. Most generally, the climate that favours this development is connected with those trends in twentieth century art that treat the work as an open whole, as for example in the sense in which Umberto Eco speaks of the poetics of the open work. This way of understanding art transfers the burden of attention from the artefact to the artist’s contact with the audience, opening up fields for play, provocation, and finally for happenings which draw the audience into co-creation. So far, perhaps, it is the creators of interactive art who have gone furthest down this road.*

8 The technical possibilities offered by electronic media allow the audience endless opportunities to intervene by freely choosing between alternative combinations designed by the creator of the work projected (in the fields both of image and of sound). See R. W. Kluszczyński, 'Interaktywność — właściwość odbioru czy nowa jakość sztuki/kultury?”, in Estetyczne przestrzenie współczesności, ed. A. Zeidler-Janiszewska (Warszawa: Instytut Kultury, 1996); P. Zawojski, “O sztuce interaktywnej”, Opcje 1999.2;

26 The Field of Non-Fiction Prose

What proved to be the turning point in the development of the diary was the custom of publishing it during the author's lifetime. In Polish literature, the first to reveal the consequences of this decision was Gombrowicz, and under his direction a new stance emerged in literature of personal document, alongside witness and confession. This new stance is provocation, a challenge issued to the reader, who is drawn into the very course of the text as it is being created. The fact that this is not only an individual feature of Gombrowiczs writing, but a developing new stance in personal literature, is confirmed by the manner in which later diarists, such as Tadeusz Konwicki, Zbigniew Żakiewicz or Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, engage in a game with the reader in a variety of different ways. The functioning of literature of personal document in the “autobiographical triangle” of witness, confession and challenge (this last will be presented in more detail in the next chapter) is the theme of this book. The two remaining areas of non-fiction prose, that is literature of fact and essays, will remain only as an understood frame of reference, outside the main focus of the book.

The Essay

The third area within the field of non-fiction prose, that is the essay, remains outside the scheme of witness, confession and challenge. Essayists, even if they write about events that they have witnessed, and even if they underline the personal character of the judgment and address themselves to an audience, for example by demanding their involvement in interpreting irony, do not do this simply in order to describe the world, to make a confession or to interact with the reader. The essay’s province is reflection; its domain is thought, the supra-individual world of culture, the world of the spirit.”

These elements, proper to the essay, are also of course to be found in the two areas of non-fiction prose discussed earlier. In so far as literature of fact and literature of personal document, which present what goes on in the triangle between

“T, “you” and “the world’, inevitably involve generalising reflection, the element

9 W.Glowala, “Próba teorii eseju literackiego, Prace Literackie 1965, vol. 7; T. Wroczynski, “Esej — zarys teorii gatunku”, Przegląd Humanistyczny 1986, no. 5/6; A. St. Kowalczyk, “W kręgu poetyki eseju’, in his Kryzys świadomości europejskiej w eseistyce polskiej lat 1945-1977 (Vincenz - Stempowski — Miłosz) (Warszawa: Eterna, 1990); Polski esej. Studia, ed. M. Wyka (Kraków: Universitas, 1991); R. Sendyka, Nowoczesny esej. Studium historycznej świadomości gatunku (Kraków: Universitas, 2006).

‘The Essay 27 peculiar to the essay, the element of interpretation, of intellectual control of phenomena, is necessarily present in them, too.

In observing the areas on the fringes of literature, in which we have already encountered utilitarian’? and journalistic texts, we come, with the essay, to another border region, that is to literary and art criticism and to academic texts (above all, of course, from the field of the humanities). It is on just this particular border that the essay, understood as a genre, is situated. It is the essay that dominates in criticism and at the point where literature and scholarship meet (the historical or philosophical essay'!). Without the essay, it is not possible fully to describe the field of non-fiction prose; not only because it forms the third constituent part of this territory, but also because it enters in a particular way into the life of many (though of course not all) works of literature of fact and of personal document. Without the category of the essay, no viable theory or history of the letter, journal, or autobiography, or of certain types of documentary or travel writing, can be proposed. However, the “essayising” tendency seems to steer in a direction that takes it away from the world not only of the private and intimate, but also of the documentary, for its essence lies in intellectual organisation of raw data, in the movement towards interpretation. By travelling further and further along this road, towards freer thought that is ever more boldly accompanied by imagination, we may leave the province of the essay and move towards that of fiction. Thus we may cross, over a different border, out of the domain of nonfiction prose and return to the ancient centre, to the literature of invented worlds.