Trauma wyobcowania w "Atlantydzie i innych wierszach" Stanisława Barańczaka

Abstract

The paper presents the experience of Stanisław Barańczak’s American immigration as the trauma of alienation of a Polish “exile.” Mulet focuses her discussion on the volume of poems, Atlantyda i inne wiersze, which describes the experiences of a man who finds himself alone in an alien society which he cannot understand and yet admires. The reflections which express both the conscious and the unconscious thought of the poet are read in the light of Charles Mauron’s psychocritical methodology and Hanna Segal’s psychoanalysis. There emerges the tragic predicament of someone torn between the concrete “here” of the present and the concrete “there” of the past. An examination of the conflict reveals that Barańczak’s obsessive recalling of memories of his homeland, constitutes in effect an autopsychotherapeutic attempt to come to terms with his anxieties, loneliness, and, above all, homesickness.