Commemoration by Deformation: Julian Stryjkowski's Linguistic Strategy

The article focuses on Julian Stryjkowski's best-known novel, Voices in the Darkness, analyzed in the context of this leading Jewish Polish writer's biography and his complicated linguistic and cultural position. A special emphasis is placed on the author's use of the Yiddish language below the Polish surface, so that it comes to the Polish reader in the form of literal translation and leads to stylization at different levels: syntactic, semantic-lexical, and phonetic-orthographic. This strategy has met with a mixed reception, because it can be perceived either as an innovative way to commemorate the world of the writer's childhood or as a deformation on the verge of mockery.