The project Tadeusz Różewicz’s Symposia is dedicated to the study of contemporary references to the sympotic topica, including games with the convention of the literary symposion in 20th and 21st century culture. Of particular interest here is the senile work of the author of Szara strefa, who sometimes makes his poems – e.g. tempus fugit (story) – into poetic records of sympotic, convivial conversations with friends: scientists, writers, painters, theatre makers. Discussions led by contemporary symposiasts concern literature, art, history, philosophy, ethics and post-modern reality. The old poet’s conversations with his friends over wine (like the ancient symposia) are not only serious but also ludic in nature, and beyond doubt they have culture-creating function.
Różewicz’s poetic symposia allude both to Plato’s Symposium and to the works of Athenaeus and Xenophon. Thus, a paideutic message emerges from the late works of the ‘poet from Radomsko’. Różewicz’s sympotic paideia has features of both philosophical paideia (reflective and even scientific) and sophistic paideia, which has a more relaxed, show-off nature.
Above all, however, the sympotic feasts recorded by the contemporary poet in his poems and described by him in his correspondence with Ryszard Przybylski are set in contemporary realities. They are sometimes symposia à rebours, undertaking a game with the literary convention of the symposion and inscribing it into a modern quasi-symposion narrative. The study of Różewicz’s senile works is intended to lead to a broader reflection on the vitality of the sympotic tradition in contemporary culture.
