Literacka nieśmiertelność sióstr Lidy i Marzeny Skotnicówien

Abstract

The literary immortality of the sisters Lida and Marzena Skotnicówna

On 6 October 1929 two teenagers from Zakopane, the sisters Lida and Marzena Skotnicówna, died tragically while trying to traverse the southern face of Zamarła Turnia. The accident became a permanent part of the history of mountaineering in the Tatras, especially of women’s mountaineering. It became an inspiration for many writers and journalists, who “immortalised” the Skotnicówna sisters, making them protagonists of poems and novels, but also expressing judgements on the legitimacy of women’s mountain climbing.
The author of the article explores works commemorating and sometimes even mythologising the sisters. Her aim is, first of all, to illustrate the role of women’s expansion in mountaineering in the interwar period, expansion which — since it is still alive through the memory of its heroines — must have been significant; and to demonstrate various ways of writing not only about the Skotnicówna sisters as human beings, women, climbers, but also as female pioneers of mountaineering or even a phenomenon.
The author’s method is based on a comparison of various literary and journalistic works and hermeneutical interpretation in a historical and social context, using the tools of geocriticism.