On the Transgressive Character. Of Contemporary Polish Poetry

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of a selection of poems: Edward Pasewicz's Egzotycznej rybie z akwarium w Café 2000 [For the exotic fish in the tank in Café 2000]; Agnieszka Mirahina's Żelazo [Iron]; and poems by Andrzej Sosnowski. These works are analysed in the context of selected theoretical investigations by Jacques Derrida, Erich Fromm and Martin Heidegger. The aim of the analysis is to present the lyrical work as a translation of the human experience of reality. A poem which is transgressive in nature is a record of an experience. In this paper, the term experience is defined in three ways. Firstly, as a strong sensation that leaves a trace in human psyche. Secondly, as a unique and unrepeatable vision of imagination or consciousness, preserved in the form of a poem. Thirdly, as a phenomenon that shows the “lacking, defective nature” of literature and of the human being. Contemporary Polish transgressive poetry gives evidence in favour of the thesis of impossibility of retaining a constant, definitive and unchangeable relationship between the human being and the world.