Methodology of Investigation in Search of Jerzy Siewierski’s Biography

Abstract

: The history of literature, like human memory, can be as selective as it
is unreliable, which means that many authors of every epoch disappear into the
darkness of oblivion. A researcher’s task is to restore the memory of those whose
works he or she finds valuable or interesting enough to want to study. The present
text deals with Jerzy Siewierski, a largely forgotten writer of post-war Poland and
a silent co-founder of the flagship magazine “Współczesność,” in an attempt to
reconstruct the biography of the Warsaw-based writer.
This work on restoring Siewierski is carried out using methods close to those used
by readers of detective novels – after all, the writer himself became famous for
them in communist Poland. Thus, we study archival traces, i.e. the traces left by
the author himself as well as those that were left by him without his will. Parallel
to the archival research, witnesses so people who knew Siewierski and remember
him, are being “interviewed”.
What emerges from these interviews is a perverse, intelligent, and interesting figure,
both significant and in the shadow of the great revolutions. Interestingly, certain
elements of the writer’s self-creation allow us to look for subtle connotations with
the father of the detective novel, Arthur Conan DoyleThese observations are all
the more interesting and valuable for literary research because no comprehensive
study of Jerzy Siewierski has been written before, and most information about him
comes from the Siewierski family archives, conversations with his relatives, and
memorabilia left by the writer.