Abstrakt: | This thorough review discusses in detail a book by Artur Hellich Gry
z autobiografią: przemilczenia, intelektualizacje, parodie [Playing Games with Autobiography:
Concealing, Intellectualizing, Mocking]. Together with Hellich, the author
inspects the reasons for distrust of the eponymous genre during the People’s Republic
of Poland’s period, and traces the transmutations thereof instigated by the writers.
Strategies deployed in selected literary works by K. Brandys, S. Lem, R. Zimand,
A. Sandauer, P. Roth, and P. Feyerabend, described as a crypto-autobiography, selfmythologizing,
and autothematic picaresque novel. Jewish descent, in the case
of majority of mentioned authors, was a factor prompting the titular games with the confessional genre. Aside from giving justice to Hellich’s novel discoveries
and compelling interpretations, the review’s author also enters into dialogue with him
concerning the understanding of broadly understood autobiographical writing. |