Inappropriate/Unapplied analogies. Lesbos by Renata Lis as a narration that extends the exile experience

Abstract

The study is mostly devoted to Renata Lis’s book entitled Lesbos. The essays composing the book, about three writers who refer in their work to Sappho to tell about homosexual identity, are complemented by a narration about the position of today’s refugees placed in the Lesbos camp. The sketch is an attempt to think of the opportunities brought by the poetry of essay, which allows us to extend our thought on the refugees’condition beyond the context of provisional problems and the language of publicity by confronting their experience with other forms of exclusion. The author invokes the existential meditation of Tadeusz Sławek, entitled U-chodzić, which is related by genre and raises similar issues, as well as the set of ornithological sketches by Stanisław Łubieński, entitled Dwanaście srok za ogon; in relation to the later work, the book shows that Lis’s intention should be extended by a non-anthropocentric dimension. Then the idea of an open interpersonal community is more complete, being an idea of a community of genres.