Experiencing history in Hanna Krall’s small narratives

Abstract

What does the experience of history mean in the work of Hanna Krall? Perhaps it is the act of photographing “never”, or perhaps the search for an answer to what is inevitable. Small narratives are always demanding; their virtue lies in offering no illusions. They are not wholes but fragments – forms of non-recognition, insoluble enigmas, literary besherts. Within the space of memory belonging to “those whose time has passed”, their lived and attested histories, under Krall’s pen, become literary: not so much testimony as what Jerzy Jedlicki called “literature that bears witness”. Experiencing history means transferring into the world what is true and what is merely probable. This mimetic duality shifts with the change of readership: for some (witnesses, observers), it is an existential experience; for others (the post- generation), an archival one. To know history as an archive of existence, to confront “never”, and at the same time to deny “never” and retrieve from time “those whose time has passed” – this is the task of the reporter, the author of narratives that bear witness.