Poland Literature – From the End of the 20th Century to the Beginning of the 21st Century

According to plus-size-tips, Polish literature of the late 20th century. it contributed to the process of cultural and social transformation that marked the transition from the communist regime to post-communist Poland. The awarding of the Nobel first to Miłosz in 1980 and then, in 1996, to Szymborska made contemporary Polish poetry definitively conquer a position of international importance. After the electoral defeat of the regime (June 4, 1989) and the establishment of a democratic and pluralist political system, the almost complete cancellation of the distinction between internal Polish literature and literature played an important role in the development of the contemporary literary system. emigration; in this way emigration writers such as Wat or Herling-Grudziński have definitively recovered their role as masters for most of the younger generations. In the 1990s, however, emigration for economic reasons became a recurring theme in literature, cinema and theater, as evidenced by the existentialist drama Antygona w Nowym Yorku (“Antigone in New York “, 1992) by J. Głowacki. In prose, in addition to the new interest in memorials and the success of paraliterary genres such as reportage, which finds its best expression in the works of R. Kapuściński ( Imperium , 1993), still traditional narrative works emerge, such as ‘peasant prose’. Instead, the kresy theme maintains vitality even in the latest generation of writers, continuing a centuries-old tradition., the multi-ethnic oriental lands lost by Poland after the Second World War, recalled with nostalgia in the novels of A. Kuśniewicz and I. Newerly. Literature with a Jewish setting also retains considerable importance, not only against the background of the memory of war events, as in the prose of H. Krall, A. Szczypiorski, H. Grynberg, JM Rymkiewicz, but also addressing the question of Polish Judaism in existential and ontological terms, as in the novel by B. Wojdowski Chleb rzucony umarlym (“Bread thrown to the dead”, 1971), or developing biblical and Jewish motifs, as in the narrative works of Kuśniewicz or Stryjkowski.

In the context of the younger generation, a narrative often referred to as postmodern is progressively imposed. The successful novel Panna Nikt («Miss Nobody», 1994) by T. Tryzna, from which Wajda drew the film of the same name (1996), and the short novels by M. Gretkowska, My zdies´ emigranty (in Russian, “We are emigrants here”, 1992), Kabaret metafizyczny (“Metaphysical Cabaret”, 1994). Alongside Gretkowska there are other exponents of the new women’s prose of the 1990s: I. Filipiak and O. Tokarczuk, coming from the background linked to the underground magazine bruLion («Draft»); M. Świetlicki (Zimne kraje “Cold Countries”, 1992; Schizma «Schisma», 1994) and R. Tekieli (Nibyt «Almost to be», 1993). Their lyric, which is inspired by the minimalism of the American poet F. O’Hara, contrasts both with the committed poetry of the previous poetic generation born on the wave of the Polish 1968 protest, and with the neoclassicism of other notable poets born between the 1960 and 1972, such as J. Mikołajewski, K. Koehler, J. Klejnocki, R. Mielhorski, and in particular W. Wencel, whose poetry (Wiersze “Poesie”, 1995; Oda na dzien sw. Ceczlii “Ode to anniversary of Santa Cecilia », 1996) has aroused great attention. In the panorama of poetry, together with Szymborska and Miłosz, Z. Herbert has a prominent place, with his poetic collections, including the latest Epilog burzy («The end of the storm», 1998), and T. Różewicz ( Zawsze fragment «Always a fragment», 1996). In the field of dramaturgy, the production of Mrożek (who returned to his Krakow after a long, voluntary exile) is still worthy of note, who after writing in the early 1980s pièces of civil and moral commitment ( Ambasador“L’ambasciatore”, 1982; Alfa, 1984) moved on to a more meditative and existential type of comedy ( Kontrakt “The Contract”, 1986), landing on the epic-lyric vein with the three-act comedy on twentieth-century Russia Miłość na Krymie (“Love inCrimea », 1994), however continuing to walk the streets of the beginnings in comic-grotesque style, as in the comedy I reverendi, represented in world premiere in Genoa in February 2001 with the collaboration of J. Stuhr.