Kto to był? : żona Lota w poezji polskiej XX wieku, czyli rozbijanie stereotypu

The book presents the way a Biblical motif of a mysterious Lot’s wife was used in the Biblical poetry. The first part describes the way the character is presented in the Bible. What was emphasized is a short presentation of the character on two occasions: in The Book of Genesis and the Gospel according to St Luke. In both cases, it is a one-sentence piece of information about Lot’s wife who was turned into a salt plug. The author of the work attempts to justify the way the woman character was presented in the Bible, in relation to cultural determinants of the Ancient East. The context of the presentations is both the historian’s and theologian’s deliberations. The second part is an interpretation of the 20th century poetic works, entitled Lot’s wife or displaying this motif. The chapters constitute a whole in which the subsequent poems by Beata Obertynska, Wislawa Szymborska, and Jozef Lobodowski resemble a triptych. The context of the interpretation is Lot’s wife - a poem by Anna Achmatowa, whereas a pretext for discussion is an interpretation of poems by Szymborska and Achmatowa, made by Clare Cavanagh, an American researcher. This part is supplemented with a presentation of the poem by Joanna Kulmowa, in relation to Leszek Kolakowski’s philosophical tale. In the third part, poems by Waclaw Oszajca and Janusz S. Pasierb were discussed. They were presented as texts dealing with philosophical and theological issues, deliberations of which were inspired by the original poem by Tadeusz Nowak. The whole closes with reflection on the interpretation of the Biblical motif, serving the purpose of adding the meaning to the Biblical sign.