ELDER BROTHERS. RÓZEWICZ VIS-A-VIS 'THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE' (Starsi bracia. Rózewicz wobec 'Leku przed wplywem')

The article shows in practice how to use the instruments of analysis developed by Harold Bloom in his 'The Anxiety of Influence'. The author provides an interpretation of 'Appendix' - a series of poems where Rózewicz 'rewrites', as it were, Leopold Staff's texts - construing it as an instance of a typically Bloomian situation, wherein a young poet reinterprets his poetical master's work. Having demonstrated that 'Appendix' exhibits all the six revisionary ratios discussed by Bloom, the author argues that Staff is not the 'precursor' (i.e. the one who influences Rózewicz's work) and goes on to claim that it is more important for Rózewicz to identify with his brother than with the Old Poet. After exposing the process of identification and analysing various relations in the Janusz - Tadeusz - Staff triangle, the author arrives at the conclusion that, in Rózewicz's writing, the mechanism of replacing a genuine precursor by someone who only masquerades as one is the rule rather than the exception, which is confirmed by the case of substituting Milosz for the character Janusz.