Rojsty 1957/2010. Remarks on the causative stigma of censorship

Abstract

In 2013, an impressive critical edition of In Stahlgewittern by Ernst Jünger, bringing seven further authorial versions from the years 1920–1978, was published in Germany. The author of the article correlates that undertaking with the publication of Konwicki’s Książki wybrane under the auspices of Agora. Some parts of the text removed by censors became restored but not marked. The thread of editorial considerations is followed by the author’s demand to prepare editions of at least ten works from universally acclaimed canon determined in the Polish People’s Republic, which would be critically annotated and make both integral versions of the text available under one cover. Considering the interpretation of both versions of Rojsty: published in 1956 and the one issued in 2010, which is identical to the original work published in 1948, the author meticulously juxtaposes the most crucial differences between the editions. She states that censorship removed all references to Operation “Ostra Brama” from the novel. In the author’s version these references give the novel a deeper historical breath. After removing Operation “Ostra Brama”, the guerrilla presented in the novel lost its climax: the fateful coming out from the forest, and it fell apart into a number of grotesque episodes. Due to Operation “Ostra Brama” present in the novel it is possible to see in various narrative techniques, which depreciate military effort, the tribute repaid by the writer to the authorities in return for the opportunity to inject into public circulation an issue doomed to oblivion.