Textualization of Experience. About Moje przygody z historią [My Adventures with History] by Marian Brandys

Abstract

The article contains an interpretation of the essays Moje przygody z historią [My Adventures with History] by Marian Brandys. The paper pays a special attention to the relations amongst past, the experience and the record. The book includes the memories from the period 1918-20 and the role of an imaginary “Kingdom of Belorussia” in the narrator’s life; the report of author’s research on what happened to Poland’s Last King’s remains, and a quasi-diary presentation of repressions inflicted on Brandys’ wife because of her opposition activities. The author considers the issues of the textualization of experience, historical cognition, interweaving of macro- and mikro- scale in history appearing in these writings, and also analyses Brandys’ problematizing of a historian’s work as well as relations amongst remembrances, imagination, documents and fiction. The article shows how a personal experience influences historical investigations, and how narrations from the past enable to reinterpret one’s own biography and his present as well as to resist grabbing microhistory by History.