Deconstructing the king of spades. A book review of Emilia Kledzik’s Perspektywa poety. Cyganologia Jerzego Ficowskiego, Poznań 2023

Abstract

The author reviews Emilia Kledzik’s book titled Perspektywa poety. Cyganologia Jerzego Ficowskiego [A poet’s perspective. Gypsyology by Jerzy Ficowski] as an item dedicated to the person of the poet, against the background of the reception of his work to date. It is interesting to see the choice of the subject of the monograph concerning a previously uncommented part of Ficowski’s literary output including, to a not inconsiderable extent, texts which are non-literary at least by design. The author of the review notes the extent of the researcher’s queries and the contexts she cites, the dissertation’s detached language, meticulous documentation and interdisciplinary nature, as well as the anti-discriminatory assumptions of her book (also in view of the anti-discriminatory assumptions of Ficowski’s own project and activities). Using the tools of both imagology and postcolonial criticism, the researcher detects a unique “construct of Gypsyness” in the pro-Gypsy writings of the author of Pod berłem króla pikowego [Under the Sceptre of the King of Spades]. This observation, along with demonstrating the historical character of gypsiology by analysing the conditions in which these writings were created, is aimed at renewing the Polish state of Romani studies. The author of the review also addresses the ambivalence evoked by the clash between the attitude of the author who affirms the richness of different cultures and takes the side of persecuted minorities with the results of the analysis of his texts, in which new theories make it possible to see the effects of excessive attachment to one’s own construct, and the question of the migration of these and other objections into wider circulation. Emilia Kledzik’s interpretations foster discussion and enliven the reception of the author of Cyganie na polskich drogach [Gypsies on Polish Roads] in a non-obvious way.