An American Reads Andrzej Bobkowski's Wartime Notebooks

The article points out several of Andrzej Bobkowski's main concerns in his youthful Wartime Notebooks that may be of particular importance to contemporary American, although not only American, readers. They are the desire for individual freedom unrestrained by ideology, freedom from national or class allegiance, and disengagement from the past, be it familial or historical. Accordingly, the journal Bobkowski—a Polish exile in the German occupied France—kept throughout the war years became a project of gradual self-discovery and self-liberation.