 | Wydawnictwo Literackie
Kraków 2002
© 1967 Valetta Malinowska photographs
144 x 205
792 pages
paperback
ISBN 83-08-03181-1 |
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Bronisław MalinowskiA Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term
Here we have a book that is almost 800 pages long, and whose author is the world famous anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, who researched the life of aboriginal peoples and spent years living among them. We might just set it aside as a textbook for specialists, if it weren’t for the intriguing title, A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term. As soon as we open the book arbitrarily, at any page, we’re done for. Immediately we are drawn into astonishing reading matter, into an adventure we never expected to find. Malinowski’s fascinating personality and the unusual, almost reckless candour with which he reveals himself, disclosing secrets that people usually keep well hidden, are astounding. More or less consciously, diaries are usually stylized compositions, the creation of biography and the psyche. In his Diary, Malinowski is not playing a role at all, but is himself, i.e. a scientist who presents everything accurately, including himself.
He faithfully records the facts, his thoughts and experiences, revealing the whole seething tangle of his personality, which he will do anything to understand, to sort out and make sense of. He is by no means an exhibitionist who shows off his secrets. He is rather someone who researches his own psyche, just as he researches the aboriginal peoples’ psyche, which can never really be fully understood by ‘civilised’ people. He lives with them in their exotic, outstandingly beautiful landscapes, learns their languages with admirable skill and persistence, takes part in their ceremonies, and admires their imagination, their aesthetics and gods, their magic and incantations. He doesn’t fully understand them, but nor does he fully understand himself. It is this unusual combination of intimate diary with the scientific discoveries recorded in it that creates a unique opportunity to discover our own secrets as well as those of far-away peoples.
Helena Zaworska
Bronisław Malinowski (1884-1942) was a world famous ethnologist and social anthropologist. He was the founder of the functional school, popularised the method of intensive field research, and was one of the most important figures in modern thinking and the knowledge of humankind. Extracts from his diaries (notebooks written on New Guinea, Mailu and the Trobriand Islands) were translated into English and published in 1967 under the title A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term.
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