Jasieński na lewo : myśl marksistowska w twórczości Brunona Jasieńskiego

Abstract

In my article I present a short, historical overview of the literary works of Bruno Jasieński, put in a chronological order and seen from the Marxist perspective. I refer to the statements on Jasieński’s oeuvre made by Polish Marxist critics both before and after WWII and present their judgments about his books. I adopt a three-part division of Jasieński life and works proposed by Krzysztof Jaworski. Firstly, I focus on what can be called as a futuristic and salon socialism period. In this part I analyze Jaśnieński’s poetical debut – But w butonierce, a volume widely seen as being strongly influenced by the Russian Ego-Futurism. I also present a brief overview of the role played by Jasieński in the unification of Polish futurist movement. Finally, I refer to Pieśń o głodzie, a narrative poem in which Jasieński combined futuristic and socialist inspirations, effectively inventing a new kind of Polish poetry. In the next section of the article, I focus on what may be called a revolutionary formation period, in which Janieński organized Polish Workers Theater. I conclude this part with an analysis of I Burn Paris, a novel depicting burning down of the capital of European bourgeoisie. The last section covers the soviet period of Jasieński’s life, starting with his experiments with merging fantastic narratives with a new-born socrealistic aesthetics in Bal manekinów. In this part I focus on the arguably most important work of the soviet period – Ziemia zmienia skórę, a novel about building socialism in Tajikistan, which became an obligatory read in Tajik public schools. In conclusion, I offer a short reassessment of the opposing views on Jasiński’s work proposed by Polish critics.