Gold and ash: Inquest into archives and interpretations concerning Leo Lipski’s memoir from Paris

Abstract

The article presents the origins, an analysis of textual material, and an interpretation of
the content of Leo Lipski’s Parisian memoir entitled Paryż ze złota [Paris Made of Gold].
The memoir was a description of the author’s experiences related to his trip from Tel Aviv to Paris in 1975. The starting point of the article is a comparison of the typescript of the work, sent to Jerzy Gierdoyc in 1976, with the version published in 2002. What draws attention in the former are the corrections, in particular the deletions related to Lipski’s health, as he suffered from right-sided paralysis and aphasia. The analysis of these deletions prompts the interpretation of the work. The article presents two complementary readings of the text. The first one is bright (its metaphor is gold) and focuses on the joy of the author who, going to Paris, made his dream come true, and the memories of his happy youth in Cracow in the 1930s. The second reading is dark (its metaphor is ash) and follows the hidden thanatotic thread of the memoir in which the writer’s war experiences come to the fore. The aim of the article is to demonstrate how a compulsion to repeat traumatic experiences in the memoir is
intertwined with literary attempts to reverse them and return to the happy past.