Looking at the Draft and Thinking the Environs. Exercises in Genetic Criticism

The essay is devoted to the following problem: how is it possible to search for a link between genetical analysis of the rough draft and the reflection about the spatial and social surroundings, within which the creative action took place. “Environment” here is understood, firstly, as the very same sheet of paper, used by the author to create the poem, secondly, as the interpersonal and social relation, that stimulates (but also limits) creative subject’s activity, thirdly, as the “hospital”, what means: a material space, an institution and a social situation), in which the creative subject strives to preserve their subjectivity. As the cases studied in this kind of “regime of interpretation” serve the working manuscript left by three major Polish poets of twentieth century: Czesław Miłosz, Tadeusz Różewicz and Zbigniew Herbert.