“The sea depths where people perish… or don’t”: Forms of disappearance in Leo Lipski’s prose

Abstract

The article offers an analysis of an yet unpublished scheme of Leo Lipski’s short novel Piotruś [Little Peter] (most likely created by Łucja Gliksman). The author presents some hypotheses concerning the origins of the document and discusses it in relation to Lipski’s life and works. In the second part of the article the plan provides a starting point for the discussion of the passage of the disappearing, vertical ‘I’ into the horizontal realm of being. By introducing these terms, inspired by Martin Heidegger’s thought, the author intends to highlight the structure characteristic of Lipski’s texts at various stages of his work. Lipski knew and valued Heidegger’s work, which proves crucial in the analysis of the ontological nature of his writings. The concept of Gelassenheit proves particularly illuminating, although Lipski could not have been familiar with it when he was writing Piotruś [Little Peter].