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Alessandro Ajres
University of Turin, Italy
Alessandro Ajres is contract-professor at the University of Turin, in Italy. He recently published a scientific work on Gustaw Herling-Grudziński's tales and a critic paper about the presence of myth in Wisława Szymborska's poetry (in the frame of the PRIN project developed by four Italian Universities). He lives now in Katowice (Poland) for a NAWA project about Polish hip-hop.
The presence of the Great Mother in Polish women's contemporary literature (and beyond)
In these most recent years the figure of the Great Mother has conquered the covers of magazines and was the protagonist of an acclaimed film such as: God is a woman and her name is Petrunya (2019). Its presence in contemporary Polish literature can be observed starting from a poem by Wislawa Szymborska, A Paleolithic Fertility Fetish (from the collection No end of fun, 1967), up to the most recent books by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk as Anna In w grobowcach świata (Anna In in the underworld, 2006) or Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, 2009). Along this path, the Great Mother "strengthens" her presence in Polish literature to the point of also appearing in Stefan Twardoch's novel Król Warszawy (The King of Warsaw, 2016) in which the point of view is mainly male, when not macho.
