| dc.description.abstract | Stanisław Dygat’s humour is an integral feature of his prose and the language he uses
plays a crucial role in it. Flexible, fluent, abounding with original comparisons, flowing gently
and with verve, not tiresome. Dygat feels at ease with Polish; and it shows. Reading Dygat’s
novels one has an impression of wandering through unlimited space. This impression is largely
due to his creative attitude to language, his skill in using its various means and features,
even those from the “ancient” past of literature. Some “ tricks” of Dygat’s prose are largely
obsolete in contemporary literature, such as telling names. The writer performs a delicate
balancing act between innovative ideas and stylisation or literary allusions; and he does it
easily and gracefully.
The text presents humour, the comic and verbal humour on various levels of the novel’s
structure. The article starts with recurring narrative features of Dygat’s prose such as individualisation of character’s language; then presents: dialogues, digressions, aphorisms, key
words, slylisation and literary allusions, phraseology modifications, telling names, onomatopoeia,
situation description, metaphors, comparisons, repetitions and multiplications. The text closes
with witty details of narration such as deminutives, augmentatives and witty “epigrams” .
Humour is inextricably interwoven into Dygat’s language, but integral as it is, its role
seems superior to other characteristics of his prose. Dygat’s takes advantage of the comic
literature tradition and its old ideas. He is a master of parody and slylisation. The great
raconteur can focus on each sentence or even word, without sacrificing the verve in dialogues
or the dynamism in his description. | pl_PL |
