Dokument żałobny jako dokument osobisty

Abstract

This article examines the mourning document as a distinct form within personal document literature in contemporary Polish autobiographical writing. It focuses on texts that emerge from the experience of losing a close family member and explores how grief functions both as an impulse for writing and as a principle shaping narrative form. These works are situated within the twentieth-century tradition of personal document literature, particularly diaristic practices, while also understood as hybrid structures combining diary, memoir, essay, and therapeutic record. The analysis is organized around three interrelated categories: the moment of narrative initiation, the material and medial dimension of the record, and autothematic reflection. First, the article distinguishes between texts written during illness, in anticipation of death, and those composed retrospectively, demonstrating how temporal positioning influences narrative structure and perspective. Second, it considers the materiality of mourning testimony, including notebooks, photographs, and digital recordings, showing how the medium participates in shaping the representation of loss. Third, it examines autothematic gestures through which authors reflect on the act of writing itself, revealing a tension between the perceived inadequacy of language and the compulsion to continue writing. Drawing on works by Anna Augustyniak, Justyna Bargielska, Marek Bieńczyk, Wojciech Czuchnowski, Inga Iwasiów, Mira Marcinów, Mateusz Pakuła, Tadeusz Różewicz, Michał Turowski, Agata Tuszyńska, Justyna Wicenty, Marcin Wicha, Aleksandra Zbroja, the article argues that contemporary mourning documents both inherit and transform the conventions of personal document literature, redefining the relationship between grief, memory, and literary form.