Debata: Pisanie to JA! Autobiografia jako poszukiwanie tożsamości

A literary debate I AM THE WRITING! AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS A QUEST FOR IDENTITY!

Chaired by: Michał Pabian

With the participation of Justyna Sobolewska, Professor Piotr Śliwiński, and Radosław B. Maciąg

Autobiographism in Gombrowicz’s oeuvre is a trace leading to a whole gamut of games with and reading strategies for his works. The I, present in the narrative, builds a dense web of hints and delusions in search of the talking subject. Individualism, the individual presence in the social system, is a foundation of modernity. It would seem autobiography in literature will become a category of communication and building trust with the reader. Yet autofiction is more strongly present in writing than simple memories, the truth and invention of literature are continually negotiated by means of ‘the autobiographical pact’. What about the lyrical I, the category so beloved of literature teachers? 

/Michał Pabian/

Justyna Sobolewska – a literary critic, writer, and journalist with Polityka weekly. The author of an essay collection A Book About Writing (2012, 2016), a selection of Kornel Filipowicz’s stories My Beloved, Proud Provinces (2017), and a biography of Kornel Filipowicz Miron, Ilya, Kornel. A Biographical Tale of Kornel Filipowicz (2020), nominated to the Upper Silesian Literary Prize Julius. Co-authored A Hundred. Read It Again, written together with Anna Dziewit Meller (2021), and wrote the biography Jadwiga. A Tale of Ms. Stańczak (2024). The winner of the Polish Chamber of Books Laurel for the promotion of reading print media. Chairs the awards committee for the Literary Prize of the Capital City of Warsaw, a jury member of the Witold Gombrowicz and Central Europe Angelus Literary Prizes.

Michał Pabian – a playwright and literary curator, this season working with theatres in Warsaw, Łódź, Radom, Vienna, Kraków, and with Paris IRCAM. Writes and adapts literary texts in Polish, German, and French.

Piotr Śliwiński – A professor of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, literary theorist and critic, author and co-author of a dozen books on contemporary literature (most recently, The Inconspicuousness of Meanings. Sketches and Pretexts 2022). A curator of the international Poetic Poznań festival. Chairs the awards committee for the Wrocław Poetry Prize Silesius.