Deportacja z raju. O recepcji Skrytek Zofii Romanowiczowej (Out of Paradise. On the reception of Zofia Romanowiczowa's "Skrytki" [Caches])

The article is devoted to a reception of the novel Skrytki, recognised as the most outstanding work of Zofia Romanowiczowa, a writer constantly undertaking in her writing the theme of trauma, especially after the totalitarian camps. This work, complicated on the surface of both style and composition, as well as the ideological speech, is primarily a psychological novel, giving a precise and convincing analysis of the spouses feelings immersed in suffering, the source of which is incurable illness of their son. The fate of this emigrant family, settled in France, is marked by – which is subtly indicated in the stylistic operations (including camp imagery) – the specific experiences for the residents of Central and Eastern Europe, particularly from Poland, and especially by the atrocities of the World War II.

The main problem of the novel, emphasised on the highest and the most general (parabolic) level of meanings, including by analogy, symbolism, topic, intertextual references, is suffering existing in the world and attempts to overcome it, both in terms of its psychological, historiosophic, and theological dimension. The last of these perspectives, which is associated with the problem of evil, is updated by the writer by positioning (family) tragedy of heroes, and tragic experiences of the twentieth century in the context of the biblical theme of falling and (generating trauma) expulsion from Paradise, Judeo-Christian tradition, and its heterodox borderlands ("heretical questions").