"Wypiór" Grzegorza Uzdańskiego jako eksploracja relacji twórcy z Prekursorem w teorii Harolda Blooma

Abstract Grzegorz Uzdański's “Wypiór” as an Exploration of the Creator's Relationship with the Precursor in Harold Bloom's Theory „Wypiór” by Grzegorz Uzdański is a work that explores multiple themes, including the creative struggles faced by writers in the shadow of the legacy of great predecessors. The main characters are Marta, Łukasz, and Adam Mickiewicz, who appears in the play in the form of a vampire. Each of them grapples with their own creative crisis. Łukasz tries to write poetry, while Marta is working on a novel set in Mickiewicz’s lifetime, and Mickiewicz himself, as a vampire, longs to write but can no longer do so.In interpretation of Uzdański’s work, a key theme is the confrontation of the characters with Harold Bloom’s theory of the „anxiety of influence”. In the case of „Wypiór” the Bloomian precursor figure is Adam Mickiewicz, whose pre-vampire incarnation becomes a creative challenge and a source of suffering for the protagonists.Due to their direct contact with their precursor, none of these characters become the great poet described by Bloom. Łukasz is a weak poet who allows himself to be overshadowed by the greatness of Mickiewicz’s persona, Marta is unable to write anything original, and Mickiewicz is no longer creative.The unusual living situation of the characters, where three writers—one of whom is a vampire in the closet—share a roof, becomes a metaphor for the characters’ relationship with literary tradition. The apartment at Plac Zbawiciela in Warsaw, which once belonged to Marta’s uncle and was rented to her on the condition that Mickiewicz the vampire would stay there, becomes the space where their creative struggle unfolds. All the characters orbit around Mickiewicz, who becomes the central figure of their lives and creativity, as well as the source of their suffering and creative impotence. Moreover, Grzegorz Uzdański humorously employs the motif of vampirism to ironically comment on artistic paralysis and the issue of originality in contemporary poetry.