Między mitem, pamięcią i historią. Literacki obraz Śląska w "Czarnym ogrodzie" Małgorzaty Szejnert

Miłosz Markiewicz

"Black Garden", the Małgorzata Szejnert's novel is one from the most interesting books about Silesia. It proves that this region of Poland, the land of rich but difficult hundreds years history might be even today the excellent source of inspiration. The author doesn't intend to answer the question what Silesia is. She focused her attention on her “small native country": Giszowiec and Nikiszowiec. She develops her novel with great care systematically from the first half of XVII century, the moment when Adam Giesche arrives to Silesia after the 30 year war till today - exactly to 2006. Extremely colorful (in spite of the title) world is reconstituted by Szejnert from many sometimes forgotten documents, also from legends and tales, but mostly recovered from memory of her heroes. This collecting and aggregating of impressions, compiling of episodes, not only shows the treasures of Silesian civilization, its ethnic and language mosaic, but becomes the obvious method of presentation of very complicated Giszowiec and Nikiszowiec history and heritage. Written picture of these two suburban districts Szejnert creates using mythology from one side but also locating firmly her heroes in the real world and time, what determines their fate. Thanks to coexistence of these two moods of narration the Szejnert's novel becomes the peculiar deposit - memory store.