Mówienie Szekspirem w publicystyce PRL-u

Abstract

In Poland, after the WWII, when preventive censorship was introduced, writers resorted to metaphor and allusion anchored in the works of literary classics: they were used as the means of communication with readers in the field that was subject to political control. Shakespeare’s verses served as a tool to compromise the Marxists, their ideological ferocity and the ideological void of their supposedly strong beliefs. This was also the approach that Stefan Kisielewski, the feuilletonist of the Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, adopted in his post-war disputes with the Marxist weekly Kuźnica. Yet his adversaries, Marxist zealots, also used Shakespearean themes, though to a different end. Jan Kott would justify historic determinism, commenting on the socially radical but not openly Communist novel by Stefan Żeromski. Shakespeare’s Prospero served then as the symbol of the one who silenced the storms of revolution. In post-Stalinist times, Shakespearean metaphors were quoted in order to show the bureaucratisation of culture, and the conformism of writers’ choir, who either praised or criticised, always in unison. They could not afford to be intellectually independent, being subordinate to the centralised managing system. Often did they escape from the contemporary burning issues to the safe niche of the literary tradition. Thus, in the conditions of limited freedom of speech, they searched for a strategy of indirect articulation of problems. They reached for the motives and scenes from Shakespeare’s plays to express liberal (Stanislaw Dygat, Krzysztof T. Toeplitz) or fundamental views (Jerzy Putrament). With time, the criticism of the absurdities of the social and literary life escalated, as could be seen in the feuilletons by Janusz Glowacki. The ironic approach to deformation of Communism prevailed over the ideological disputes. In the times of the PRL, when the reality was not to be spoken about directly, the Shakespearean titles, concepts (e.g. tragedy), characters or motives functioned as substitutes. They also played a positive role as a tool of communication with those of the public who were educated enough to recognise the encoded senses quickly, and to refer them to the issues well-known to the citizens of the real-Socialism states.