Prenatalne ochrony Wokół haptyczności obiektów, wierszy i prozy Krystiany Robb-Narbutt

• Published in: Teksty drugie no. 2; pp. 246 - 264
• Main Author: Tomczok, Marta
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Polish
• Published: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk 2023; Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN); Teksty Drugie
• Subjects: Language and Literature Studies; Sociology of Literature; Studies of Literature; tactility; Bracha L Ettinger; hapticity; miniature; text materiality; art after the Holocaust; motherhood; haptyczność; materialność tekstu; taktylność; sztuka po Zagładzie; macierzyństwo; miniatura; Ettinger (Bracha L.)
• ISSN: 0867-0633; 2545-2061

The article analyzes the idea of concealing and hiding painful, personal experiences –including those related to the loss of loved ones in the Holocaust – in the art and poetry ofKrystiana Robb-Narbutt (1945–2006). The idea resembles the development of an embryoand later the fetus sheltered by the womb; a being unable to live independently outsidethe womb finds refuge in it, which gradually becomes more visible until it reaches a statewhen it is no longer needed and is left behind by the child.In Robb-Narbutt’s art, the prenatal stage – the concealing of experience – reaches astate of autonomy, in fact becoming the main and only stage of presenting what is mostimportant in her work: objects withdrawn from direct contact with the recipient anddirectly connected to some pain, someone’s trauma. This stage is important preciselybecause it presents the painful – partly presumed – experience untouched by the vieweror reader and mediated through a hiding place, a box, or a stash, but also a poem, namelymaterial and visual shelters that do not symbolize a concealment but indeed create it.However, this shelter is not temporary – as in the case of pregnancy – but permanent,and what is protected is not a simple translation of growing and dependent existence intoart, nor a visualization or symbolization of a growing fetus. On the contrary, the sheltersymbolically materializes the dead, the absent, and the lost, namely various dimensionsof death. Present in all stages and states of Robb-Narbutt’s work, such shelter makesher art a maternal womb for the memories threatened with non-existence, most oftenknown only to the artist and related to the history of her family and her own, personalexperiences.