 | Wydawnictwo Literackie
Kraków 2005
123×197
248 pages
paperback
ISBN 83-08-03707-0
Translation rights: Wydawnictwo Literackie |
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Jerzy SosnowskiAh!
Ah! is not a work of fiction like Jerzy Sosnowski’s previous books. It is a book of essays, consisting of nine comprehensive texts on religion and ethics. The delicate, complex issues that Sosnowski addresses have their own subjective reference. There is no room here for abstract discussion or theological speculation. On the contrary, the hero of Sosnowski’s book is a sensitive, well-educated man living in the here and now; he is middle-aged, “after years of bad experiences and increasing trouble with self-definition”. In the opening essay he speaks of himself as a “post-Catholic”, an “approximate Catholic”, and a “believing free-thinker”. This is someone who received a Catholic upbringing, but the religious imagination instilled in childhood and all the simplest catechismal truths have evaporated in unclear circumstances. Because this man is a liberally inclined intellectual with genuine spiritual needs, he tries to master the languages of other religions. For a short time he believes in the New Age and worships Jung. But his life starts to fall apart. Finally he realises that “stripping his life bare began with leaving the temple”. Ultimately, “the ex-apostate returns not so much to religion as to faith”. That is how the general story – perhaps the most attractive – is presented, nevertheless without exhausting a wealth of themes and topics. In Ah! we also find an essay on the dichotomy between body and soul, with special reference to the torments of Eros (The Body), an extremely erudite essay on compassion, forgiveness and atonement (Elsinore and Jerusalem), an extensive digression on passion (Saint Hieronymus’s Shinbone) and a very interesting piece about the differences between the sexes, inspired by the findings of evolutionary psychologists (The Battlefield).
Dariusz Nowacki
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