Tadeusza Kudlińskiego lektura Biblii, czyli Gniew o Soszannę

Abstract

The novel Gniew o Soszannę was wriitten in the period 1947–1962. It came out in 1963. The writer had some difficult war and postwar experiences. First, he was repressed by the Nazis and then by the Stalinist authorities. These experiences became a source of the novel from the days of the former Israel. The story is based on the episode from the Bible, Jeph’s History. He made an unheard of Yahweh’s oath and he had to sacrifice his own daughter. However, Kudliński’s novel goes beyond the colorful of the biblical story, it carries deeper reflections on human life and relationships with Yahweh. It is also a settlement with totalitarianism. From the formal point of view, it is an apocryphal narration based on Kudlinski’s principle of «symultaneity», thus realizing the ‘three-times principle’ of spatial composition. The character becomes a collective hero. Kudliński’s work fits into the search for a modern novel form in Polish literature of the twentieth century.