1st International Conference

Russian Language and Literature
in Intercultural Context

University of Rzeszow, Poland

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Provocateurs and Victims.

"The Possessed" by Camus, Warmiński and Wajda

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It was Dostoyevsky's The Possessed that helped Camus to shape his own understanding of the relationship between philosophical ideas and their historical and political incarnations. The adaptation of the novel prepared by him is a testimony to the maturation of Camus as a man and as a writer, an expression of the breakthrough that took place in the philosophy of his texts, and which in the 1970s was to finally come to the fore in the Polish reception of the author's literary output.

In my presentation, I would like to remind that in the period when Dostoyevsky's philosophical and ideological views were highly problematic in the Soviet Union, Camus, enjoying popularity not always desired by the authorities in Poland, confirmed the validity of The Possessed. In the 1970s, his adaptation of The Possessed was not only used by the  theater directors of the first two Polish stagings of this controversial novel but also helped to shape the previously absent way of interpreting Dostoevsky's work.

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