Abstrakt: | The main research aim of this dissertation is to show the complex
and diverse relations between a catastrophic imagination and the so‑called
homosexual panic stimulated by homophobically‑oriented
reality.
More generally, the work concentrates on the issue of a queer modernist
identity. The theses are reflected in Freudian interpretation of the
case of Paul Daniel Schreber and in the works of selected authors, such
as Józef Czechowicz, Stefan Napierski, Stanisław Swen Czachorowski
and Tadeusz Olszewski to whom separate studies were devoted.
The introductory chapter makes an attempt at a synthetic overview
of research done on homosexuality or, broadly speaking, sexual otherness
in Polish literary studies. A special emphasis is put on the reception
of gender studies and queer theory within the scope of native
humanist studies, starting from the second half of the 1990s. In this
context, an unquestionable contribution of Polish philologists deriving
from research centres abroad, having postmodernist theories on
deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminist or gender criticism at their
disposal and trying to abolish the taboo around sexual otherness in
Polish literature from the outside is emphasised. Pioneering achievements
should be ascribed to German Ritz, a Swiss Slavist, but one
should also enumerate his followers, among others, Alessandro Amenta
or Błażej Warkocki. The contribution of these three researchers is
significant for shaping a native type of gay and queer criticism, which,
in Polish cultural conditions, happen almost parallelly. The identity
politics of gay criticism coexists with the non‑identity
approach of
queer criticism. However, one should notice that it is prose that is a predominating subject of literary studies on homosexuality in Poland,
while poetry has not been given the appropriate language of
description. Hence the subject‑matter
of the book are mainly the poetical
works of the authors mentioned above.
In order to avoid considering literary works exclusively in terms of
the representation of homosexuality or then homosexuality problem,
a reference is made to the concept of a homosocial continuum developed
in the works of Eve Kosofsky Sedwick, an American researcher
and pioneer of queer theory. The analysis of the nature and specificity
of homosexual desire does not constitute an ultimate aim here as the
studies rather concentrate on catastrophic imagination motivated by
what breaks up and escalates fear in homosocial relationships between
men. In other words, what is important here is the way a homophobia
or homosexual panic dominating in the society shapes catastrophic
imaginations.
The relation between the homosexual panic and catastrophic imagination
employed for the interpretation of the literary works of selected
poets is based on observations concerning the well‑known
case of judge
Schreber, described and popularized by Sigmund Freud. Thus, the next
chapter presents the most important interpretations of the case proposed
after Freud by among others Jacques Lacan, Guy Hocquenghem,
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari or Eve Kosofsky Sedwick. The Freud’s
thesis on Schreber’s homosexual identity was deconstructed by his followers.
From different points of view, they claimed that the reason
of his catastrophic paranoia was not only homosexuality alleged by
Freud, but a homosexual panic, that is the fear of being accused of
a different orientation. This paranoid situation destroyed Schreber’s
identity, thus causing the illusion of the end of the world and global
catastrophe. For this reason, Schreber’s case is treated as an important
starting point for conducting broader studies on the influence of psychoanalytic
conceptions on the development of queer theory, and as an
important contribution to the interpretation of works by Czechowicz,
Napierski, Czachorowski and Olszewski. That is why the subsequent
chapters constitute individual interpretative studies in which the selected
texts are thoroughly discussed.
The largest part, constituting the core of the work, is devoted to
Czechowicz. Reconstructing a mythopeic model of poetry of the author
of Kamień, the vital role of homosexual desire connected with the most important thematic threads such as death, extermination
or Arcadia, is accentuated here. Myth creation in Czechowicz’s works
is also considered a special form of sublimation of a homosexual desire.
An important role in this system is played by boyish figures the
author elevates to the rank of divinity. The very mythical structure
constitutes a chain of life experiences and loosely treated myths, cultural
allusions and symbols. The tendency appears as early as in his
youth works, and is especially visible in debut Opowieść o papierowej
koronie thoroughly analysed here as well as in such poems as kolorowa
noc, wiersz o śmierci or, finally, the scandalizing poetic work
hildur baldur i czas, on the basis of which the poet was accused of
homosexuality in 1936. In a detailed description of the circumstances
of this scandal and a socio‑legal
situation of homosexuals in the interwar
period, hildur baldur i czas is regarded to be a crucial text in
Czechowicz’s ouvre. From that moment on, a catastrophic visionariness
clearly strengthens, and the poet himself moves away from social
life, dealing with the problem of rising fascism and anti‑Semitism
in his literary and essayist works. He stands up for human dignity
and love. Czechowicz’s works and essayist particularly, their myth‑creating
character, are also considered here from the perspective of
the aesthetics of the camp, referring to the psychoanalytic conception
of this phenomenon, proposed by Kosofsky Sedgwick. From this
angle, poetry by Czechowicz becomes a gesture of a symbolic repair
of an endangered world and the poet himself is portrayed as a master
trying to save humankind from extermination.
The third chapter centres around Mark Eiger’s life and works, a homosexual
writer and literary critic of Jewish origin, publishing under
the nickname of Stefan Napierski. Referring to biographic evidence, an
oppressive system of exclusions the poet as an affluent Jew and homosexual
underwent is described. At the same time, a tragic existence of
the writer referred to as the last decadent of the Young Poland movement
is emphasized here, whereas decadence is understood, after Elanie
Showalter, as an euphemism of repressed homosexuality. Napierski’s
imagination is discussed here between the poles of a decadent worldview,
characterizing the epoch of modernism, and a catastrophic one,
describing the poet’s awareness before the outbreak of the World War
II. Besides, homosexuality in Napierski’s literary works is considered in
relation to the romantic tradition of friendship and travel writing. According to many researchers, the ideal of romantic friendship is situated
at the borderline of a homosexual desire. Napierski is probably the first
Polish poet who, through his works, pointed to a vital transition in the
structure of a male homosocial continuum, the transition of which resulted
from consciously expressed homosexuality. Reading Napierski’s
poetry and his only novel Rozmowa z cieniem from a homosexual angle
strengthens the catastrophic premises of this writing.
A catastrophic continuum also includes the linguistic poetry by
Stanisław Swen Czachorowski, which comprise the references to homosexuality
the presence of which has not been considered so far.
The memory of war experiences becomes a fixed dominant of Czachorowski’s
catastrophic imagination to which homoerotic issues are
related. A broadly developed phallic metaphoricity, as well as the motif
of nudity, connected with a rich system of cultural references (David,
Gilgamesh, Hiacynth from the Bible) correspond with the problem of
war extermination. The strategy of a linguistic split of imagination and
its “reparation” interpreted in the perspective of a camp sensitivity
plays an important part here. Like in Czechowicz, the world seen by
Czachorowski in the perspective of a camp is an idyllic world following
the phase of destruction and catastrophe.
The last interpretative study is devoted to a less known, though more
contemporary author, that is Tadeusz Olszewski. His poetry, created at
the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, is a record of the private biography
in which the process of revealing a non‑normative
sexuality is one of
the most important points. The very process shows a great diversity
of homoeroticism starting from the sublimation of homosexual desire
and a transitory stage of bisexuality to a full homosexual approval
or even a gay identity. In this poetry a catastrophic myth characterizing
the lyrics by Czechowicz was manifested itself. Tadeusz Olszewski’s
poetry is a proof of discovering otherness through homosexual
codes of culture. Numerous references to works by homosexual authors
(Auden, Ginsberg, Kawafis, Mann, Musil, O’Hara, Whitman and others)
prove the need to build a homosexual tradition. The intertextual
tracing of homoeroticism in cultural texts has become for Olszewski
a convenient way of constructing his own sexuality and subjectivity
entangled both in cultural as well as personal experiences. Olszewski’s
poetry, as well as his only novel, Zatoka Ostów, show the tragic condition
of a homosexual from the 1980s. Exposing catastrophic elements of decadence, Olszewski’s works are inscribed into the phenomenon of
20th‑century
decadence and the author as such is defined as the last
decadent of the Polish People’s Republic.
The theses and assumptions presented in the book enrich the tradition
of existing studies on the achievements of particular authors with
new and so far unnoticed elements connected with the subject of non‑normative
sexuality. And, as I believe, they can also play a part in describing
various phenomena in literary history more thoroughly. |