Reception of historical memory in the works of contemporary Polish writers

The purpose of the study was to explore how authors of Polish prose from the late 20th to early 21st century reflected the past and constructed collective experience by drawing upon a range of archival sources and artistic techniques. This study adopted an interdisciplinary approach that integrates comparative-historical analysis, reception theory, contextual interpretation of literary texts, methods of cultural analysis for examining collective memory, and a comparative perspective with analogous narratives in Ukrainian literature. The analysis demonstrated that Polish writers transformed historical material through genre experimentation, including elements of horror and phantasmagoria, which underscores the unfinished nature of social trauma and encourages readers’ extended reflection on collective moral guilt, contributing to national identity development. The works of Stanisław Srokowski, Łukasz Orbitowski, Andrzej Szczypiorski, Igor Ostachowicz, and Sebastian Reńca demonstrate a dynamic interplay between documentary sources (such as archives and eyewitness testimonies) and the authors’ psychological and myth-making techniques, which together create a space for multifaceted interpretations of the past. These texts also illuminated the moral dilemmas generated by divergent historical narratives. The findings demonstrated that the incorporation of figures such as ghosts, zombies, or other markers of the “return of the dead” functioned as metaphors for unresolved historical conflicts, which required contemporary re-evaluation. Such representations reflected deeply contradictory aspects of national memory, particularly in relation to taboo subjects such as collaborationism and the post-war underground. The reception of historical memory in these Polish texts extended beyond the mere presentation of facts, evolving into a complex interpretation that fused documentary evidence, authorial intuition, and socio-cultural stereotypes, while offering new perspectives on the interplay between official and marginalised memory. The practical value of this study lies in the potential application of its conclusions in further literary and cultural research, the development of educational programmes, interdisciplinary initiatives, and public discourse aimed at critically renewing historical consciousness and fostering a more sustained and reflective democratic culture of memory