'Our monuments are ambiguous ...', Tadeusz Rózewicz's epitaphs

This essay attempts at interpreting selected poems and essays by Tadeusz Rózewicz, in the context of funereal/commemorative issues. These include both occasional texts devoted to the memory of individual persons as well as pieces considering the problem of Death in a universal perspective. Having assumed that the issue of Death - a death of God, man, and poetry, and reciprocal associations thereof - is one of the major threads in the poet's oeuvre, the authoress attempts at reconstructing the reply Rózewicz gives to the question of how is it possible for poetry - 'dead, as it is, ... mortal, as it is', and deprived of a metaphysical foundation - to save or preserve the memory of a dead person. She tries to prove that Rózewicz's funereal output polemicises with a consolational model of mournful or memorial poetry and its traditional topics.