ПОНЯТИЯ «МОЛОДОСТЬ» И «СТАРОСТЬ» В РАССКАЗЕ АДОЛЬФА РУДНИЦКОГО "ШЕКСПИР"

Abstract

The paper discusses Adolf Rudnicki’s story Shakespeare (1946) depicting the life of Jakub and Maciej, two representatives of so called “generation 1910”, for whom WWII became the end of youth and the beginning of their premature aging. Hence, the youth of the protagonists corresponds to a pre-war and the senility to a post-war stage of their life. The pre-war life histories of Jakub and Maciej contain autobiographical and biographical references, at the same time characteristics of writers of “generation 1910” are also brought to the foreground. But in the post-war life histories of the protagonists we can see two opposing paths of one man and consequently also interpret the story itself in two ways: as Rudnicki’s personal contemplation of the two potential variants of his own further biography or as a reflection on two possible paths of Polish writers, in particular of Jewish origin, who have experienced WWII.