https://doi.org/10.32798/zl.1173
The article discusses the problem of private and public life-writing in state-socialist Poland and Bulgaria, on the basis of literary texts and a family-kept archive. The analyzed literary materials include an open letter sent by the Polish writer Wilhelm Mach to his Bulgarian colleague Vicho Ivanov, published both in Bulgarian and Polish, and later fictionalized and re-written into a passage of Mach’s novel titled Góry nad czarnym morzem (“The Mountains by the Black Sea”). Both creative processes, that of translation and fictionalization, are discussed closely. It is argued that Mach’s technique of private disclosure for the benefit of official ideology is not motivated solely by political and propaganda considerations. Paradoxically, the communist Wilhelm Mach reveals his privacy and underscores its conformity with the official cultural line of the socialist state in order to conceal his marginal position as a homosexual man and protect his beloved ones from homophobic policies of the state.
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