Flâneur and the terror of the city
The scream may not belong to the canon, because it has not been re-issued for a long time. Somehow it is so that in high school many of us are excited about Young Poland, but it does not translate much to the market. Affected youth are usually not a major purchasing power. This is probably why the idea for the fundraiser, in fact, the pre-orders, thanks to which it was possible to release some Przybyszewski into the world.
The protagonist of The Scream is an artist and a flanner – he wanders around the city in dreamlike moods and looks for inspiration. He is attracted to the extraordinary and the terror, because only thanks to them he manages to see under the lining of reality. In addition to descriptions of the city, you will also find frenetic evenings in pubs, not necessarily appetizing descriptions of food (also because the artist is credible, i.e. without money) and attempts to understand others through inspirational descriptions of their dormitories destroyed by life. What do you associate this with?
Originality – what does it taste like today?
I have to repeat that heavy word again: classic. Przybyszewski in 2020 brings to mind Knut Hamsun or Edgar Allan Poe. Due to the fact that we know them better, The Scream does not appear to us as original as it was originally. I am afraid that the well-read recipient will not be able to avoid the impression that he knows many elements of this story, and even that he had to deal with their more successful productions. Take a correction for that – it’s because of us, not Przybyszewski. At the time of its premiere, this text did not seem typical to anyone.
Michał Pleskacz writes about the modernity and breakthrough of Krzyk in an interesting and convincing way . It deals with the issues of language – not only its innovative form, but also translations into German or Czech, which appeared shortly after the Polish premiere. He remembers the writer’s daughter, Stanisława, who reinterpreted her father’s work. He talks about film adaptations, completely forgotten today, because they appeared shortly after the premiere of the text. The volume also includes a short artist’s Neris , which is the original version of The Scream , which allows us to better understand the writer’s style of work.
Do we need Przybyszewski for anything today? For me, it is first and foremost a matter of undoubted nostalgia. I was fascinated by Young Poland, I read Miciński, Hamsun (I would think twice today), I keep coming back to Poe. Perhaps it is a generation issue and I am not alone in my longing for the Wagnerian tone of these texts – after all, Publishing House IX publishes new editions of the aforementioned Miciński. On the other hand, when it comes to the heirs of Young Poland’s aesthetics, we keep reading and reissuing Grabiński.
Scream 2020
Golem focuses not only on reliable editing of the text, their books are also graphically refined. In the case of Przybyszewski, you will immediately notice the presence of black pages – these are fragments of the protagonist’s exceptionally intense deliberation. You will also see a “bug” crawling through the pages, sometimes falling into disturbing distortions and oscillations. Finally, the chapters are captured in a beautiful Young Poland detail, as if we were entering them through a wrought-iron gate.
Is this a fan only book? Not necessarily. High school students who are just discovering the horror and beauty of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries will certainly please them. They waited for a book that I could only dream of reading the white series of the National Library. I would not recommend it to people for whom the language or history of a literary work are of little importance.
