Sei Solo. O samotności w sensie ścisłym (Jerzy Pilch Żywego ducha)

Sei Solo. On solitude in the strict sense (Jerzy Pilch „The Living Spirit”) Jerzy Pilch’s novel Żywego ducha [Living Spirit], published in 2018, is an exceptional item in the writer’s oeuvre, being a manifestation of his ‘late style’ (Spätstil). The uniqueness of this work also stems from the fact that Pilch subjected not only himself and his writing to intellectual and artistic revision, but also Culture, i.e. that sphere which – opposing the mythical powers of Nature – constitutes a kind of fortification (also consolation) against the randomness (randomness) of events. The absolute loneliness of the novelistic narrator results from the hypothetical assumption that the signs of words, the signs of culture, do not indicate the presence of some external instance guaranteeing the meaning of the world. On the other hand, it is possible to pose the thesis that it is literature that is the individual’s act of defence against nothingness.