Tomasz Zan’s letters from prison: Is it possible to write rozdziałki in isolation?

Abstract

The article attempts to investigate in what way Tomasz Zan’s works changed as a result of author’s experience of isolation while being imprisoned. Rozdziałki, a genre original to the author, develop parallelly with Zan’s biography. They reflected the feeling of loneliness and other circumstances of his time in prison by measures such as the poetics of dreams and imagination, the use of a specific literary codes and elements of grotesque. The analysis of Zan’s works written in prison leads to the conclusion that the author’s attitude towards literature evolved during his life, and especially as a result of his imprisonment.