MAREK HLASKO'S SHORT STORY 'SZUKAJAC GWIAZD' (SEARCHING FOR THE STARS) AS A PARABLE OF THE HOLOCAUST AND A MYTHICAL 'INITIAL EVENT' IN HIS OUTPUT (Opowiadanie M. Hlaski 'Szukajac gwiazd' jako ...Holocaustu i .. 'wydarzenie poczatkowe' w tworczosci..)

Marek Hlasko's short story 'Szukajac gwiazd' was published in 1963. It has all the properties of a parable and is a kind of parable about the Holocaust. Its conventional character points to the ethical controversies related to such a kind of Holocaust presentation, i.e. we deal here with the temptation of universalisation. The hero undergoes a specific rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, centred around the Holocaust, being at the same time a mythical 'original event', underpinning the existential condition of 'a man without innocence' - a figure designed by Marek Hlasko. The boy will later become all the men in the writer's stories and novels. What is interesting is the superposition of a typical Hlasko motive, i.e. frustrated love, on the Holocaust situation, and the resultant impossibility of an authentic encounter between the I and the Other. Existential loneliness and being lost in the world are combined with the memory of the Holocaust.