Szaleństwo możliwości : "Wariatka" Zbigniewa Herberta

Abstract

The central issue addressed in this paper is the interpretation of “Madwoman”, a piece of the poetic prose by Zbigniew Herbert, presenting the image of the Other appearing in it, as well as a somewhat schizophrenic dichotomy of the narrator — a dichotomy between health, self-control, and functioning in the boundaries of social norms, and the abyss of mad¬ness, forgetting oneself in the internal world, which results in the lack of understanding by “normal” people, but also in a kind of freedom unattainable by those people. However, the interpretation results in side-note deliberations on interpretational traps and challenges it poses today for literature scholars. It is necessary to find a reasonable bal¬ance between theoretical knowledge and a literary text, contexts and an analysis of selected material; it is also important to oscillate around a personal reading of symbols and metaphors included in the text, and the intent of the broadcasting instance. These deliberations are the second problematic layer of the article; the author’s intent was to retain balance between these two thematic fields, and exhibit how many questions interpreters should ask them¬selves before engaging in the “mature” reading.