ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the possibility of reading contemporary Polish poetry in the context of Jewish material culture studies. Specifically, it deals with poems that reflect on the function of “Post-Jewish” objects and sites in contemporary Polish culture. All of the poems analyzed in this chapter also confirm that in contrast to art or architecture, literature deals with material culture in a distinctive way: since it cannot present it in a three-dimensional way, it relies on mediated materiality, shown through poetic tropes and accessible by means of imagination. The subject of the first part is the contemporary debate around Zuzanna Ginczanka’s poem [Non omnis moriar], one of the first texts to raise the issue of Poles denouncing Jews to Germans during the war and seizing their property. In the 21st century, the researchers’ focus is no longer only on the content of the poem and its meanings, but also on its status: legal and material. In the second part, the author analysis how the “Post-Jewish things”: the remnants of matzevot and cemeteries, destroyed synagogues, and illegally taken objects of everyday use are treated in the polish contemporary poetry (especially by Piotr Mitzner and Dariusz Pado) in the context of postcatastrophe and remembrance.
