Gry w Holokaust. Yann Martel: Beatrycze i Wergili. Przeł. Andrzej Szulc. Warszawa, Wydawnictwo Albatros A. Kuryłowicz, 2010, ss. 240

Abstract

The Holocaust Games. Yann Martel: Beatrycze i Wergili. Przeł. Andrzej Szulc. Warszawa, Wydawnictwo Albatros A. Kuryłowicz, 2010, ss. 240. In a review of Yann Martel’s novel Beatrice and Virgil, the work of the Canadian writer is presented through the pursuit of a new language of speaking about the Holocaust. This is a task which Martel as well as the protagonist of his novel, Henry, the author of a work about the Holocaust of the Jews, in which he futilely attempted to go beyond the sanctioned ways of writing about the Shoah, set themselves. In Beatrice and Virgil a crucial feature is the interpenetration of two orders – the problem of thematising the Shoah meets an animal theme, which is represented by Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller, a story about an obsessive hunter, and through the art of preparing and stuffing the bodies of dead animals and transforming them into artistic exhibits. In Martel’s work, the master of taxidermy is also the author of a theatrical play about a sheass and an ape, Beatrice and Virgil, which became the victims of events which bear a striking similarity to the various scenes of the Shoah. The basic problem in the novel is not so much a problematisation of the Holocaust but the means of “linguifying” it and the position which may be asserted by the writers who present their Shoah‑related narrations