Zaklinanie zagłady (o debiucie powieściowym Piotra Szewca)
Streszczenie
The article is a contextual interpretation of The Annihilation (Zagłada) by Piotr Szewc,
which is one of the most outstanding “mitographical” works of contemporary Polish prose.
There are at least three levels of reading the novel. At first the work is a symbolical structure
presenting (“predicting” ) the Holocaust, the annihilation of the concrete historical world.
Secondly and simultaneously it expresses impossibility of (or problems with) describing and
preserving the past in social and individual memory. And finally Szewc, simulating the narration
of myth, tries to recreate the world of values which were (are) annihilated, dispersed by
totalitarianism: culture heterogeny, pluralism, tolerance, freedom.