ALEKSANDER WAT: A FORM OF LIFE. A STUDY ABOUT WRITING, EXPERIENCE, PRESENCE

The review takes up Pawel Paszek's book Aleksander Wat: forma zycia. Studium o pisaniu, doswiadczeniu, obecnosci (Aleksander Wat: A Form of Life. A Study on Writing, Experience, Presence, 2021), a detailed exegesis of Aleksander Wat's two works: juvenile JA z jednej strony i JA z drugiej strony mego mopsozelaznego piecyka (ME from One Side and ME from the Other Side of My Pug Iron Stove, 1920) and Piesni wedrowca (Songs of a Wanderer), the first cycle of Wiersze srodziemnomorskie (Mediterranean Poems, 1962). The transformation that took place between the juvenile and the mature writing does not change, according to Paszek, the nature of Wat's composition, neither does it distort the specific constans marked by text's functional conception, according to which a text is writing-creating. Erudite considerations offer numerous stimulating suggestions, open uncommon contexts and inspire to new readings of the pieces that have to this day been repeatedly investigated. Innovation and originality not infrequently disperse in discursive line of reasoning, in metaphorical and piled up additions, in rhetorically expanded escapades and, ultimately, in reiterating previously raised issues, all of which blur the sense of the intricate literature.