Table Of Content:
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STUDIES IN leT
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GLOBAL GENRE FICTION l
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Holocaust and the Stars
The Past in the Prose of Stanistaw Lem
Agnieszka Gajewska
Translated by Katarzyna Gucio
SERIES EDITORS:
BODHISATTVA CHATTOPADHYAY
AND TARYNE JADE TAYLOR
HOLOCAUST AND THE STARS
This book is a groundbreaking study of one of the greatest science fiction writ-
ers, the Polish master Stanistaw Lem. It offers a new direction in research on his
oeuvre and corrects several errors commonly appearing in his biographies. The
author painstakingly recreates the context of Lem’s early life and his traumatic
experiences during the Second World War due to his Jewish background, and
then traces these through original and brilliant readings of his fiction and non-
fiction. She considers language, worldbuilding, themes, motifs and characteriza-
tion as well as many buried allusions to the Holocaust in Lem’s published and
archival work, and uses these fragments to capture a different side of Lem than
previously known. The book discusses various issues concerning the writer’s life,
such as his upbringing in a Jewish, Zionist-minded family, the extensive relations
between the Lem family and the elite of Lviv at that time, details of the Lem
family killed during the German occupation and attempts to reconstruct what
happened to Lem’s parents and to the writer himself after escaping the ghetto.
Part of the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series, this English translation of the
Polish original, which has already been considered a milestone in Lem studies,
offers a fresh perspective on the writer and his work. It will be an important
intervention for scholars and researchers of Jewish studies, Holocaust literature,
science fiction studies, English literature, world war studies, minority studies,
popular culture, history and cultural studies.
Agnieszka Gajewska is professor at the Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology
at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznari, Poland.
Katarzyna Gucio is an experienced and highly accomplished translator of Polish
and English.
Studies in Global Genre Fiction
Series Editors: Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, University of Oslo, Norway and
Taryne Jade Taylor, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, USA
Studies in Global Genre Fiction offers original insights into the history of genre
literature while contesting two hierarchies that constrain global genre fiction
studies: (1) Anglophone literature and other global language literatures and (2)
literary fiction and genre fiction. The series explores the exchanges between
different literary cultures that form aesthetic concerns and the specific literary,
sociopolitical, geographical, economic, and historical forces that shape genre fic-
tion globally. A key focus is understudied genre fictions from the ‘global South’
— where geographical location or language often confines works to the margins
of the global publishing industry, international circulation, and academic scru-
tiny, even if they may be widely read in their own specific contexts.
Contributions to this series investigate the points of disruption, intersection
and flows between literary and genre fiction. The series analyses cross-cultural
influences in literary classifications, translation, transcreation, localization, pro-
duction, and distribution while capturing the rich history of world and global
literatures.
Editorial Advisory Board
¢ Takayuki Tatsumi (Keio University, Japan)
¢ Dale Knickerbocker (East Carolina University, USA)
¢ Pawel Frelik (University of Warsaw, Poland)
¢ Joan Gordon (Nassau Community College/Science Fiction Studies, USA)
¢ Amy J. Ransom (Central Michigan University, USA)
¢ Farah Mendlesohn (Anglia Ruskin Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy,
UK)
¢ Rana Issa (American University of Beirut, Lebanon)
¢ Alexis Brooks de Vita (Texas Southern University, USA)
¢ M Elizabeth Ginway (University of Florida, USA)
¢ Aino-Kaisa Koistinen (University of Jyvaskyla, Finland)
¢ Helge Jordheim (University of Oslo, Norway)
¢ Abhyit Gupta (Jadavpur University, India)
¢ Suparno Banerjee (Texas State University, USA)
¢ Isiah Lavender III (Louisiana State University, USA)
Books in this series
Indian Genre Fiction
Pasts and Future Histories
Edited by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Aakriti Mandhwani and Anwesha Maity
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com
/Studies-in-Global-Genre-Fiction/book-series/SGGF
HOLOCAUST AND
THE STARS
The Past in the Prose
of Stanistaw Lem
Agnieszka Gajewska
TRANSLATED BY KATARZYNA GUCIO
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
Cover image credit: Katarzyna Swinarska, Deserted Lviv (Lwow
wyludniony) , 2016, charcoal, watercolor on paper and collage, 21 x 28 cm,
Gdarisk, Poland. Used with permission.
First published in English 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2022 Agnieszka Gajewska
The right of Agnieszka Gajewska to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Translated by Katarzyna Gucio
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Published in Polish by Adam Mickiewicz University Press 2016
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gajewska, Agnieszka, author. | Gucio, Katarzyna, translator.
Title: Holocaust and the stars: the past in the prose of Stanistaw Lem/
Agnieszka Gajewska; translated by Katarzyna Gucio.
Other titles: Zaglada i gwiazdy. English
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. |
Series: Studies in global genre fiction | Includes bibliographical
references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021032597 | ISBN 9780367428723 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780367428730 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367855642 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Lem, Stanislaw—Criticism and interpretation. |
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature. | History in literature.
Classification: LCC PG7158.L392 G3513 2022 | DDC 891.8/5373—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021032597
ISBN: 978-0-367-42872-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-42873-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-85564-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780367855642
Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
CONTENTS
Biographical Notes vi
Author’s Note Vil
Series Editors’ Preface Vill
Introduction
1 Lem(berg) Land 36
2 The split 72
3 Holocaust in space 118
Conclusion 157
Index 161
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Agnieszka Gajewska is Professor at the Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology
at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznari, Poland. She is the author of Zagtada
i gwiazdy. Przesztosé w prozie Stanistawa Lema [The Holocaust and the Stars: The
Past in the Prose of Stanistaw Lem], Poznan, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM
2016, for which she received the postdoctoral title of doktor habilitowany. In her
earlier research work, she focused on feminist criticism (the monograph Hasto:
feminizm, 2008), minority discourses (she edited an anthology of Polish transla-
tions: Teorie wywrotowe, 2013) and political prisoners (various articles). She is
currently working on a biography of Stanistaw Lem. She is the director of the
Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender and Identity Studies at Adam Mickiewicz
University.
Katarzyna Gucio 1s an experienced and highly accomplished translator of Polish
and English. Her credits include literature (for her Polish translation of The Tattooist
of Auschwitz by H. Morris, she received the Best Foreign Book of the Year Award),
monographs and other scholarly works (including English editions of books by
award-winning scholars, such as Wire-Bound State. The Lodz Ghetto by A. Sitarek,
British Diplomacy and the Concept of the Eastern Pact by D. Jeziorny or Kantor, A
Monograph by Dominika Larionow, to be released in 2020). She has completed
numerous translation projects in collaboration with most major art institutions and
museums in Poland and continues to work with them on a regular basis. Since 2013,
she has been part of a team (and as of this year—the chief translator) tasked with
translating the enormous collection of documents saved from the Warsaw Ghetto
(the so-called Ringelblum Archive) into English. She also translates poetry—a col-
lection of her translations of poems by W. B. Yeats will come out in April 2020.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This book, Holocaust and the Stars: The Past in the Prose of Stanislaw Lem, was pub-
lished in English thanks to the financial support of the Faculty of Polish and
Classical Philology AMU in Poznari. Additional funding for this translation and
editing have been provided by the University of Oslo under the “Frie Midler tl
Forskning” scheme as well as by COFUTURES (European Research Council grant
agreement no. 852190).
The monograph was created as part of a project financed by the National
Science Center, granted on the basis of decision no. DEC-2011/03 / B / HS2 /
0348.
SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE
In Holocaust and the Stars, Agnieszka Gajewska offers a groundbreaking study of
one of the greatest science fiction writers, the Polish master Stanistaw Lem. Lem
is an industry by himself; his works have been filmed (most famously Andrei
Tarkovsky’s Solaris from 1971 and Ari Folman’s The Congress from 2013) and
have been the inspiration for scientific and technological theories such as the
cutting-edge constructor theory, and he has been both highly controversial and
highly influential. While there are a number of critical studies on Lem, includ-
ing several in the last few years alone since his death in 2006, such as works by
Peter Swirski and the translation of his 1964 non-fiction masterpiece Summa
Technologiae (U Minnesota Press, 2014) among others, little light has been shed
on the impact of the Holocaust on his oeuvre.
In this book, Gajewska painstakingly recreates the context of Lem’s early life
and his traumatic experiences during World War Two due to his Jewish back-
ground, and then traces these through original and brilliant readings of Lem’s
fiction and non-fiction. Gajewska considers language, worldbuilding, themes,
motifs and characterization, as well as many buried allusions to the Holocaust in
Lem’s published and archival work. She uses these fragments to capture a differ-
ent side of Lem than previously known, since Lem himself rarely discussed his
early life and his wartime experiences. The book was published in 2016 in Polish
as Zaglada i gwiazdy. Przesztos¢ w prozie Stanistawa Lema. This edition has been
specially translated and revised for English language publication. The book has
already been considered a milestone in Lem studies, receiving a stellar reception
in academic and popular reviews.
