Life Without Labyrinths: on XXI Century Polish Poetry

Abstract

This article investigates the striking absence of the labyrinth motif in Polish poetry written between 2001 and 2026. Historically, the labyrinth served as a central archetype for modern existence, representing complex intellectual quests, psychological depth, and the search for spiritual or existential truth. The author examines how contemporary poets navigate the post-postmodern landscape, an era shaped by the collapse of core postmodern tenets – such as the concept of the „end of history,” the demise of grand narratives, and the self-creating yet self-destructive Nietzschean individual.

In place of postmodern irony, today’s literary production is forged under the weight of acute historical trauma. The article identifies a series of transformative global disruptions that define this new reality: the collective shock following September 11, 2001, the escalation of global warfare, the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, alongside the COVID-19 pandemic and the accelerating climate crisis. Rather than confronting these overwhelming realities directly through complex mythic structures, contemporary Polish poetry often adopts a strategy of withdrawal. The author argues that many poets escape from grand historical narratives into secondary topics, personal micronarratives, and aestheticized gestures of revolt.

Ultimately, the void left by the labyrinth diagnoses a fundamental crisis of expression: a pervasive inability to articulate the chaos of the 21st century due to a lack of an adequate poetic vocabulary. When the labyrinth does occasionally appear in the work of select poets – such as Wojciech Kass, Wojciech Kudyba, Jarosław Jakubowski, and Bernadetta Kuczera-Chachulska – it abandons its traditional universal scale, taking on a strikingly intimate, highly personal character instead. Polish poetry of the 2001–2026 period emerges as a literature of crisis and disorder, actively seeking new modes of expansion and language to map an increasingly legible world.