Opowiadam, więc jestem

I tell, therefore I am [Review: Anna Węgrzyniak, W świecie, który wciąż się rozpada. Lektury prozy XX i XXI wieku (In a World that Continues to Fall Apart. Reading Prose of the 20th and 21st Century), Wydawnictwo Naukowe ATH, Bielsko-Biała 2019, pp. 215.] The present text is a review of a monograph by the eminent (recently deceased) scholar professor Anna Węgrzyniak. The book In a World that Continues to Fall Apart. Reading Prose of the 20th and 21st Century is a collection of essays divided into three sections, and each of those concerns texts by writers from various generations. They are connected by the category of decay, but the centre of this brilliantly spun yarn is taken up by a subject connecting all of the broken worlds – a narrator, a teller, building his identity through a tale and showing the diverse faces of history, humanity, individual existences. “To live, one has to tell stories” – writes Węgrzyniak in the introduction (p. 9). This is why she herself focuses on the tale and on careful reading. Thus she creates a captivating, very approachable history of reading and of perception of texts, combined with scholarly reflection.