Narrating World War II: Myths of the War and Death in Zuzanna Ginczanka's Poetry

• In Event: Counter-Monuments, Poetic Myth, and Coal: New Vantage Points on the Holocaust in Eastern Europe

Abstract

This is a brief outline of the chapter of my forthcoming book about the poetry of Zuzanna Ginczanka (1917–1944), the Polish Jewish poet from Ukraine and a victim of the Holocaust. I am focusing on mythologies of the war and death in her oeuvre, how its motifs and plots are circulating in the poetry, and how the young woman is telling her anticipation and experience of the war which she regrettably did not survive. Her magnum opus “Non omnis moriar” (1942) will be involved in the discussion but many other texts are being considered here. Following my line of the book narration, I am talking about the idyllic utopia of the shtetl that is based on the Ukrainian experience of Ginczanka, in my opinion, and the motif of exile, the multi-faceted poetic vision of the war, poetic paraphrases of death in the narrative of the Holocaust, the artistic peculiarity and memorial capacity of the testament mentioned, and functioning of satire and irony in this context.

Author

• Khrystyna Semeryn, Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (Ukraine)