„Nadzieja nie umiera nawet w piekle”. Doświadczenie łagru w prozie i liryce Jurija Dombrowskiego .......... 223

“HOPE DOES NOT DIE EVEN IN HELL”: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE GULAG CAMP IN THE PROSE AND POETRY OF YURI DOMBROVSKY

This article examines the experience of the Gulag camp in selected works by Yuri Dombrovsky, in particular in the poems from the collection My Unbearable Reality, published in the sixth volume of the writer’s collected works in 1993. Drawing on the concept proposed by Alexander Etkind, I refer to the literary works of Yuri Dombrovsky, a long--term prisoner of the Gulag, as “carriers of memory.” An analysis of Dombrovsky’s prose and lyrical works demonstrates that the writer regarded it as his duty to preserve and pass on to future generations the memory of the tragic events of the 1930s and 1940s in the USSR. The works analyzed in this article, which contain a record of traumatic experiences and dramatic ordeals, should be viewed as the voice of a witness to history and a victim of a criminal system.