The Troop of Men. Male Characters in Selected Novels by Marian Pankowski

The article analyses the way men are portrayed in Marian Pankowskiʼs prose, which may be characterised as strongly male and linguistically novel. His literary project is founded on the tension between the official and the private, between culture and unbounded (frequently perverse) eroticism, between the colloquial and the lyrical language. Relationships between men (sometimes taking the form of a classic homosocial community) are very important in this project. Attention is drawn to situations in which social mores are disturbed or taboos violated due to the collision (and intermingling) of Batailleʼs “sphere of night” with the safe “sphere of production”. Robert Blyʼs approach forms the starting point as it underpins menʼs studies and closely coincides with Pankowskiʼs novels, being attuned to rites of passage and to social or mental male interdependence. The texts examined in the essay are Matuga idzie (Here Comes Matuga), Rudolf, Putto, Bal Wdów i Wdowców (Widowsʼ and Widowersʼ Ball) and a survey of menʼs attitudes, the novella Ostatni zlot aniołów (The Last Convention of Angels).