Zimna hermeneutyka Tadeusza Różewicza

Abstract

PATRYK SZAJ Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań TADEUSZ RÓŻEWICZ’S COLD HERMENEUTICS The author of the article attempts to set Tadeusz Różewicz’s poetry into the context of John D. Caputo’s radical hermeneutics. The paper opens with an interpretation of problems of Różewicz’s fragmentary work which reveals its radical hermeneutic implications that include e.g. conviction about the collapse of metaphysical interpretation of the world, objection to any complete encompassment, being subject to flux. Różewicz’s poetry realises Caputo’s hermeneutics basic imperative–“restoring life to its original difficulty”; the poetry is characterised by peculiar “honesty” consisting in retaining the state of uncertainty, instability and liquidity, and non-neutralising them with metaphysical support the aim of which is protecting the play of meanings and reassuring the subject. That perspective allows to interpret, inter alia, Różewicz’s poems touching upon the problem of part and whole, nihilism as a peculiar cultural diagnosis, and impossibility of unambiguous sense reconstruction. The article also describes Różewicz’s poetry “radical hermeneutic circle” which proves to be a crooked circle since it lacks in completeness and moves only from a fragment to a fragment. Ultimately, the paper exploits positive implications of Różewicz’s stance, focusing on poetical, ontological and ethical problems.