“A la manière de Proust” or post-Proust: Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s short story “A New Love”

This article analyses the transformative infl uence of Marcel Proust’s fi ction on early works of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (1925–1927) in the light of the short story Nowa miłość [A New Love]. The article argues – on the basis of a reconstruction of the order in which Iwaszkiewicz read the volumes of In Search of Lost Time – that the date of its composition has be to revised and proceeds to explore the affi nity between the two writers. The analyses, which draw on Harold Bloom’s infl uence theory, compare and contrast their handling of scenes and narratives, relations of analogy and visions of love. The article claims that Iwaszkiewicz was keen to enter into dialogue with the French author and adopted some of Proust’s techniques, yet without compromising his own creative autonomy. In the course of that dialogue he developed a notion of Proust’s literary art which, it is argued, provides the key to the interpretation of homoeroticism and narcissism in Nowa miłość.