Heroizm i ofiary. W kręgu nowelistyki Juliusza Kadena-Bandrowskiego z okresu Wielkiej Wojny

Abstract

The article presents Juliusz Kaden Bandrowski’s literary output connected with the war of Polish independence. The writer, enriched by his own war experience, exploited the war themes and soldiers’ misery extensively. Conventions of a report, picture, study and short story, as genres already stylised, and as genres emerging “right before the author’s eyes” were evenly saturated with factual material. Kaden was one of the writers who presented war as a way for “Poland to be” and who used literature as patriotic propaganda. He was also a bard who built up a myth of the legionary deeds and Pilsudski. Bandrowski’s short stories and scenes from the period of the Great War collected in Iskry, Spotkania and Przymierze Sere depict the stay of the writer’s regiment on the Narew, popular attitudes of the people of the Congress Kingdom of Poland towards the soldiers of Polish Legions, and they recall his companions from the combat trail. A documentary form is one of the platforms of reference. Kaden’s report technique directs the reader’s attention to what is objective in the general sense, and simultaneously transfers facts to a system of aesthetic motivation thus determining the imposed structure of the work. A short story merges into a report as it results directly from a commentary on the authentic life of the legion; simultaneously it departs from it because the descriptions of nature, wildlife, countryside and soldiers’ harsh living in the provincial barracks become the author’s artistic adventure in the form of a short story. The description is not strictly a report, which would eliminate other aspects. Factual presentation is “open”. Accidental factors tend to be causal and observation is submitted to a greater control. The artistic means and stylistic figures are used to document the writer’s hegemony over the publicist or reporter.