The (Old) Poet Broods

Abstract

In this paper, the author discusses the representations of the creative process in the writing of Tadeusz Różewicz. He refers to cultural studies (including anthropological research, which in this case inspires psychoanalysis), gender studies, and above all – to masculinities studies in the
perspective of a biological turn, looking for analogies between Różewicz and the title character of the drama The Old Woman Broods. The key concept for the author is the cuvada – a phenomenon that has recently been widely researched in Poland by Ewa Głażewska. An attempt to adapt the theory
of “incubation” (of eggs) by “a male” to literary research creates an interesting image of a poet-sitter
and a “ruminant” at the same time. In the continuum of consumer culture, the poet appears to be the
one who, on the one hand, absorbs cultural achievements, and on the other hand – releases them in
the form of his own text in a specific act of phantasmatic childbirth-defecation – aa experience that
is both painful and impossible for a man.