“In fondo siamo quasi amici”. I servizi di sicurezza della Repubblica Popolare di Polonia nel Gemello di Józef Hen

Abstract

The article focuses on the constructive elements which used by Józef Hen to give birth to the figure of Marek Marczewski (later Mraczewski) in the short story “The Twin”, written as a reaction to the tragical riots in Warsaw in the first months of 1968. Though often seen as a work conceived on the spur of the moment, this short story is in fact more complex than that already in the first version, published in the émigré journal Kultura in 1972 under the pseudonym Korab. A closer analysis of the relationship between the protagonist Leopold Piński and the security agent Marek Marczewski reveals intertextual references to Dostoevsky’s The Double, and Crime and Punishment, and in the edition published in 1990 also to Bolesław Prus’s The Doll.