W labiryncie. Cenzorskie recenzje "Pamiętnika znalezionego w wannie" Stanisława Lema

The article presents censorship reviews of "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" by Stanisław Lem written in censorship offices in Cracow and Warsaw. As a result of the reservations expressed by censors, the author added a new preface to the novel which was accepted for the publication of the book without further interference. Numerous censorship documents dealing only with one novel clarify the circumstances of writing the foreword and also provide some insight to the censors’ way of thinking, illustrate the most important control mechanisms and present formal evaluation criteria – both politically-ideological and aesthetic. The censors evaluating Lem ’s novel do not intend to go through the interpretative labyrinth of "Memoirs…"; they insist on author’s unambiguous comments which would allow to neutralise political vagueness by the 'appropriate' orientation of the novel. When accepting the new preface they seem to omit (yet it is not certain to what extant the omission is deliberate) the fact that the added foreword is another layer of the novel’s fiction and is not a meta-comment which could be considered as the voice of the author.