The Lithuanian landscape tradition in the novels of Tadeusz Konwicki

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Tadeusz Konwicki; Novelės; Lietuvos kraštovaizdis; Lietuviška kilmė; Lenkiškasis Lietuvos paveldas; Lenkų literatūra; Adomas Mickevičius (Adam Mickiewicz); Atmintis; Tadeusz Konwicki; Novels; Lithuanian scenery; Lithuanian origin; Polish-Lithuanian heritage; Polish literature; Adam Mickiewicz; Memory.

ENThe purpose of this study is to offer what might be styled a Lithuanian reading of Konwicki's work. Initially, it will set out to outline the model of competence pertaining to the "Lithuanian Encyclopaedia". This will involve analysis of the Lithuanian element in Polish culture, and an attempt to define the ethos of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania within Polish literature and the Polish collective subconscious. It is within this geographical, historical, cultural and literary framework that the oeuvre of Tadeusz Konwicki may be contextualized and assessed, so as to demonstrate the extent of his participation in tradition which, to quote Paul Ricoeur, "is effectuated through the interpretation of signs, works and texts, into which the heritage of the past is inscribed and given us to decipher". It has been claimed that only a reader from the banks of the Vistula is competent to recognize the real-life allusions of Konwicki's Warsaw-focused prose. During the rule of communist censorship, the initiated reader was often prevented from decoding the text, or naming the symptoms of the coded distemper. At best he would decode by means of a secondary code or system of reference; only half the story could be told. The process was further impeded for a period of nine years when Konwicki published only in the clandestine press and in the West. Unless he was reviewing for an émigré or dissident publication, the critic would resort to Aesopic allusion. For similar reasons, a fullscale "Lithuanian" interpretation of Konwicki's texts was unfeasible for the best part of half a century. Lithuania was part of the Soviet empire, past history was denied, distorted, refabricated in the light of Marxist directives.Since around 1990, there has been a fashionable upsurge of interest in the culture of Poland's Eastern borderlands, resulting in a proliferation of texts and titles, not infrequently by writers and scholars whose forebears hail from those parts. Regardless of intrinsic merit, these studies are often characterized by a tendency to synthesize rather than analyse. The point of view evinced is largely Polonocentric, with often insufficient regard for the niceties of history and geography. Rivers and localities are confused, regions interchanged; and it has even been rumoured that Lithuania was a "region" of Poland. In the field of literary studies the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is not addressed as an autonomous entity, nor is landscape the primary focus or point of view; the perspective is a Polish one. Maria Zadencka is one of the few authors to treat the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a separate political and cultural body. In confronting this terminological stumbling-block, it must be stressed that "Lithuania" for centuries designated the historic Grand Duchy of Lithuania; and in the historic Grand Duchy, nationality was often a question of individual perception and choice. For several hundred years, a "Lithuanian" was an inhabitant of its huge, shapeshifting spaces. "Lituanité", to use an apt French coinage, does not signify ethnic separateness, but emphasizes the spiritual separatism enjoyed by a vast geocultural territory. A study of the tradition from which the writings of Tadeusz Konwicki emerge, and his place within this tradition, cannot avoid one-sidedness. Historical and literary sources used are mainly Polish. Even though the cultural medium is Polish, the criterion is territoriality, the central focus (or hero) is locality and landscape, albeit presented through the medium of Polish literary texts. [Extract, p. 21-23]