No. 40 (2025)

The articles collected in this issue of Forum of Poetics highlight Krall’s enduring presence in Holocaust literature, while also revealing the persistent and painful challenges of reception that continue to reflect deeper tensions within Polish culture.

In his opening address at a Warsaw meeting dedicated to Hanna Krall, Jerzy Borowczyk described the reporter as “a tireless interpreter of the fraught twentieth century, unfailingly attentive to others and ever prepared to grant them a voice—shaping their fate in a manner both distinctive and selfless.” He thus drew attention to the phenomenon of Hanna Krall—her extraordinary capacity to accompany others in shaping their testimonies while at the same time safeguarding her own voice.

In a significant monograph on Krall, Joanna Roszak underscored the distinctive structure of her works: “she positions the reader alongside her heroines and heroes, who themselves often sit in an empty space. It signifies the absence of someone. Of something. By inviting the reader into this void, she enables them to touch it—this act is oxymoronic because it is intangible, yet safe because it exists within the page. (…) One might think that Krall seeks to tell all the stories (…) but her own” (J. Roszak, Hanna Krall, Tkanie [Weaving]. Łódź 2024, p. 34).

The articles we invite you to read uncover multiple facets of Hanna Krall’s “books that bear witness” and seek to illuminate the remarkable phenomenon of her craft as a reporter.

In a pivotal essay, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir demonstrates how clichés, stereotypes, and attempts to “smoothen” or aestheticize the reception of Krall’s books have both deflected and obstructed Polish responses to the Holocaust. Marian Kisiel, respectively, draws attention to the reporter’s technique, examining her focus on individual fates that shape the texture of her writing: biographies presented as “open wounds” become “literature that bears witness.” Krall’s choice of technique is inseparably bound to the question of whether profoundly powerful experiences—experiences that alter the very horizon of perception, understanding, and articulation—can be represented at all. The three articles that follow concentrate on the concept of trauma in Hanna Krall’s works, each exposing a different facet of its presence.

Bartosz Dąbrowski, in his reading of Krall’s Sublokatorka [Subtenant], approaches the text through the lens of mimicry, revealing the fracture and pain of the “split self”—a self “positioned” and constrained by the dominant Polish community. The trauma inscribed in this experience, at once disclosed and concealed by affective language, poses a profound interpretive challenge for that community (with Joanna Tokarska-Bakir’s essay offering essential context). At the same time, the very act of containing such experiences within a text may be understood as a form of working-through, opening the possibility of situating Krall’s writing in relation to therapeutic practice. Katarzyna Prot-Klinger develops this perspective with particular force: drawing on trauma theory as well as her clinical practice, she interprets Krall’s books as therapeutic work grounded in listening, while also acknowledging the reporter’s skepticism toward such methods. In my own dual role as author and editor, I likewise engage with the category of trauma by analyzing Synapsy Marii H. [Maria H.’s Synapses], seeking to illuminate how the world appears to those marked by trauma, what “traumatic reality” signifies for them, and how their surroundings may respond.

The next two articles examine different dimensions of the reporter’s work. Ewa Bartos, in her reading of “Co się stało z naszą bajką” [What Happened to Our Fairy Tale], shows how the use of fairy tale conventions provokes reflection on the cultural narrative patterns that continue to burden the reception of Holocaust stories. Anna Pastuszka, respectively, highlights the international interest in Krall’s writing by analyzing German translations and their reception, drawing attention to the limited awareness among German readers of what transpired during World War II.

The findings presented in these articles not only reaffirm the significance of Hanna Krall’s writing but also invite us to pursue the lines of inquiry they open, prompting ongoing reflection on the power of texts and the ways they shape us.

In a book-length interview with Wojciech Tochman, Krall remarks: “I once read that telling and listening to stories is a natural need of the human brain. Reportage, after all, is storytelling. Perhaps it should be added to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. There are five—physiological needs, belonging, recognition… The sixth natural human need would be reportage” (Hanna Krall, Pożegnanie z Narwią [Farewell to Narwia]. Interview by Wojciech Tochman. Kraków 2025, p. 155). It is a perspective that opens the deepest path into Krall’s work.