One of the first books that I read in Polish which was not a required reading for school was a novel by Tadeusz Konwicki – “Mała apokalipsa” – A Minor Apocalypse. This story, narrated in the first person, is captivating from the very first scene in which Konwicki wakes up in a state reminiscient of Charles Bukowski, to have drink; and he is soon being asked by some old friends to set himself on fire that evening in front of the party headquarters in Warsaw as an act of protest. Reluctantly he accepts, the rest of the book follows his adventures of the fateful day. A Minor Apocalypse is a hilarious look at the absurdity around us from a first-person perspective.
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“DS: A British poet, Philip Larkin, said once that he quit writing novels because novels are about other people whereas poetry is about oneself. If we go with this distinction, can we call your books poetic?
TK: Technically, yes. I write about myself because I came to the conclusion that I am most competent in this sphere. Even if I create various characters, make a plot, some chain of events, everything is saturated with me. I am present all the time, to formulate, mold, remind the reader that it’s me. I staked my writing on that. I think that, in the terrible chaos we have now, objective, transparent prose has to perish because it will be replaced by more perfect forms, like film or television. Only a person can arouse other people’s interest in societal relations. Some people are fascinating, others are old bores. We want to be with some, and we run away from others. So I charm the reader all the time and satiate him with myself, and in this way I use poetic technique. And that’s the only thing worth doing, as opposed to describing the world that we get every day from millions of TV programs, journalists, photographs, newspaper reports. We know this world inside out. We have enough dead bodies in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Palestine, or anywhere else. Finally we are haunted by a thirst to find some universal sense in all that happens. And that’s what poetry likes.
source: An Interview with Tadeusz Konwicki By Dorota Sobieska
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Konwicki is also a film director and screenwriter.
[Photomedia Forum post by T.Neugebauer from May 20, 2006 ]
