NON-REALITY OF EXISTENCE: LEOPOLD BUCZKOWSKI'S 'THE BLACK TORRENT'

This article contains an analysis of Leopold Buczkowski's 'The Black Torrent', one of the most important Polish novels of 20th century. The author's key terms are trauma, dialogue and the category of the Real, adopted from Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis. 'The Black Torrent' from the title is interpreted as a record of the trauma caused by the war. Buczkowski's novel shows a degraded world, deprived of sense or any firm symbolic reference points. In these circumstances the only effective survival strategy can be found in dialogism. The term is used here in a sense broad enough to include some elements of Lacan's theory, especially his theory of the Symbolic and the Real order. The article also looks at the ways of presenting traumatic experiences and the prospects of formulating a model of the traumatic representation.