Jak zwyciężyć nie walcząc? Dzienniki Żeromskiego a płeć pisania

How to Win without Combat? Żeromski’s Journals and Gender of Writing

This article presents Stefan Żeromski’s long journal-keeping practice used as a tool of more or less effective autotherapy and a private, self-governed course of creative writing. Making his way to Polish literature, Żeromski is first guided by his zealous and charismatic teacher from Kielce higschool, Antoni Gustaw Bem, who promotes an agonistic, harsh and aggressive vision of the cultural tradition and writing process which, for a modern ear, mirrors Harold Bloom’s anxiety of influence. However, his devoted and loving student finds another, milder perspective, built on enchantment, passion and the literary sense of belonging. Żeromski’s hot, somatic and extremely intimate attitude toward his work is illustrated by strikingly female writing metaphors such as novelist’s labor compared to the experience of pregnancy or to the activity of a spider persistently making its subtle web. In the second part of this article, the author aims to show that the critical discourse surrounding his profoundly involved literature, a discourse burdened with fear and abjection, bears a close resemblance to the methods of hushing and exorcising women’s voices identified as weird and hysterical.