Published: 2025-09-30

Annihilation and the bearers of it in Odysseus Weeping and The Day of Wrath by Roman Brandstaetter

Dominika Budzanowska-Weglenda
Kultura Media Teologia
Section: Artykuły i rozprawy
https://doi.org/10.21697/kmt.2025.63.09

Abstract

Roman Brandstaetter (1906–1987) – a Polish poet, playwright, novelist and translator of Jewish origin – touched on various themes in his literary legacy, among them the problem of war, annihilation, suffering from evil and the spiritual transformation of those doing this evil. Using two examples of his dramas, the article shows how this writer dealt with the annihilation of the Second World War and the people experiencing and doing it.

In the one-act play Odysseus Weeping (1956) – a direct reference to Homer’s epics and the annihilation of Troy – the author actually evokes the “September night” of 1939 and, in a universal message, shows evil and calls the doer of evil to inner transformation. Brandstaetter’s Odysseus is a wanderer-traveler tormented by the sight of death and the shedding of innocent blood, who gives up his family and homeland and the possession of his kingdom – in the name of penance for his doom-bearing wartime deeds. The Day of Wrath (1962) is a mystery drama in three acts, set in a Polish monastery located near a ghetto being liquidated by the Nazis. The boisterous and ambitious SS man Born – like Odysseus – carries the doom, but this leads him to despair. Brandstaetter reminds us that the day of wrath is, or can also be, a day of mercy, forgiveness and conversion.

Keywords:

Roman Brandstaetter, Odysseus Weeping, The Day of Wrath, annihilation, suffering, conversion

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Budzanowska-Weglenda, Dominika. “Annihilation and the Bearers of It in Odysseus Weeping and The Day of Wrath by Roman Brandstaetter”. Kultura Media Teologia, vol. 63, no. 3, Sept. 2025, pp. 168–190, doi:10.21697/kmt.2025.63.09.

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