Insufficiency of the flesh ('live pulp') : 'Nazajutrz' by Maria Komornicka as a record of the experience of dearth

In the work of Maria Komornicka the sense of deprivation and dearth, a characteristic feature of the Young Poland (modernist) poetry, culminates in an overwhelming, self- annihilating ecstasy. This article explores the way in which the evocation of various elements of the traditional cultural spaces (the garden and the woodland, the feast, the desert and the grotto) are used to confront one’s own self and other selves. The actors in such confrontations usually suffer from some kind of deficiency or deprivation, which becomes their distinctive characteristic. Maimed, self-harmed, intoxicated, driven into a state of self-inflicted agony the poetic "I" uses every occasion to bear witness to one’s anguish in as many ways as possible. The text of "Nazajutrz"[Tomorrow] is no exception. It is one of latent identities revealing its own distinctiveness, the self-revela-tory act of asserting one’s crippled identity of an unnatural Stranger (Odmieniec) who is a stranger even to himself/herself.