Ślady na piasku : słowo poetyckie wobec tajemnicy nieobecności

Abstract

The article: Traces on the sand. Poetic word in the face of the mystery of absence analyses the problem of lyrical ways of making absence present, artistic means of expressing disappearance mystery, describing traces of gradual leaving and their immersion into presence and absence dialectics. The author investigates realizations of the title traces mostly in the poem The Episode (Epizod) by Zbigniew Herbert coming from the volume: Hermes, the Dog and the Star (Hermes, pies i gwiazda 1957), taking into consideration, at the same time, characteristic for the whole Herbert’s output aiming at fixing the “living trace”. The piece analysis and interpretation points out how, the seemingly simple structure of disappearing, leaving of the beloved person — leaving traces on the sand — their gradual blurring and the silence of a piece of paper — contains the mystery of increasing absence.