Studnie (nie)pamięci. O „Krótkiej wymianie ognia” Zyty Rudzkiej

Abstract

The article aims at interpretation of A Short Exchange of Fire by Zyta Rudzka — a novel characterized by an episodic, undefined structure, which favors the poetics of silence. The reading of this rather short novel resembles the process of putting together a jigsaw puzzle, with only one difference: in Rudzka’s puzzle, not all the pieces fit together. The lack of chronology and the drifting between the real world and the world of dreams or blurry memories make this process even more arduous. The protagonist of A Short Exchange of Fire is a nearly eighty-year-old poet Roma Dąbrowska, who can connect neither with her mother, a Holocaust survivor, nor with her daughter. The story told by Rudzka attempts to, among others, divert the attention away from other issues, such as the story of a woman who has ostensibly survived the war, whose name and identity are subsequently taken away by the communist regime, or the darker pages of the Polish history under the communist rule, as well as the scandal of the old age and the consequences of the everyday choices.