The charming of the annihilation (on the first novel by Piotr Szewc)

Abstract

The article is a contextual interpretation of The Annihilation (Zagłada) by Piotr Szewc, which is one of the most outstanding “mitographical” works of contemporary Polish prose. There are at least three levels of reading the novel. At first the work is a symbolical structure presenting (“predicting” ) the Holocaust, the annihilation of the concrete historical world. Secondly and simultaneously it expresses impossibility of (or problems with) describing and preserving the past in social and individual memory. And finally Szewc, simulating the narration of myth, tries to recreate the world of values which were (are) annihilated, dispersed by totalitarianism: culture heterogeny, pluralism, tolerance, freedom.