When the English edition of The First Man appeared I immediately sensed the affinity with Wittlin's text. The two things in Camus's novel that struck me the most in this respect were the significance the author assigned to the theme of World War I and the preoccupation, bordering on obsession, with the notion of the "unknown."

A justification for such a comparison is inherent in the very persona of Piotr Niewiadomski, whom Józef Wittlin considered a representative of a certain class. Moreover, Wittlin saw his own book as "a testimony to the war as seen, experienced and suffered by simple soldiers." ⁴

And if Wittlin found in Gandhi an embodiment of a new Franciscan idea, I see Henry Cormery as a literary counterpart to Piotr Niewiadomski. ⁵ Across the battle lines of World War I two men, equally "unknown," seen by two great writers.

It is remarkable that Camus, who took part in the resistance movement during the Second World War and who was involved in the bitter philosophical conflict over the Cold War and the liberation war of Algeria, felt it necessary in his mature years to return to the topic connected with his own origins, and the origins of the twentieth century--the First World War. And now, at the close of the century, we are given a book that brings home once again, the senselessness of the horrific slaughter with which this century began. In his "Postcriptum to Salt of the Earth after 35 Years," Wittlin writes: "Time, instead of distancing us from the war of 1914-1918, now automatically brought it closer to us." Camus may have experienced a similar perception during the writing of The First Man. "Camus's deep loyalty to the worlds of high art and simple human existence," writes one critic, "may be sensed in almost everything he wrote, but nowhere more poignantly than in The First Man."⁶

Even accidental congruences are telling: both writers served apprenticeships in the theater, both had great affinity for Mozart. ⁷ Their very first published novels brought instant fame to both authors. Camus's first novelistic attempt, written before The Stranger and published posthumously, was called Happy Death, while Wittlin's only partially completed sequel to his renowned, and only, Salt of the Earth was entitled "Healthy Death". The titles of both books are drawn from religious imagery. Sól ziemi (Salt of the Earth) comes from the Gospel According to St. Matthew V.13; The First Man is not a literal quotation but it is a Biblical conjecture or notion as well. Both books were meant to be the first parts of an epic trilogy.

Józef Wittlin à la Rembrandt, fot. Aleksander Janta

Even the differences appear to be reversed analogies. Salt of the Earth was the first author's book, instantly translated into many languages and nominated for the Nobel Prize. It remained Wittlin's only novel and earned him an international reputation. Camus's The First Man, called by one critic "a vital example of a writer's craft" ⁸ is the posthumous work of a Nobel Laureate, the author of several novels and other works. Finally both books in question are unfinished, each in its own way. Camus's for obvious reasons--the manuscript was found in the wreckage of the car in which the author died in an accident in 1960. The First Man, Camus's last and unfinished novel, would perhaps have been the Nobel laureate's masterpiece, his last testament. Wittlin's first and only novel which the writer considered the first part of a trilogy, is a masterpiece and apparently also his testament. Some believed that Wittlin could not finish his grand project because the experience of another war and of exile stood in his way. One could say that life prevented Wittlin from finishing his first great fiction, and death prevented Camus from finishing his last.

Both writers shared the habit of endlessly revising their manuscripts, and both suffered from writer's block. Both Wittlin and Camus studied very closely the newspapers for the factual material. They both abhorred capital punishment: in his unpublished notes Wittlin wrote that it is inhumane because a man cannot impose on another something that he himself has never experienced. Anyone who has read The Stranger and The Plague remember Camus's compelling and powerful protest against capital punishment.

Both writers stripped the war of its ideological trappings and portrayed it as institutionalized killing. They strongly emphasized the unresolvable conflict between the humanitarian and the patriotic points of view. Rising above "patriotic" themes, Wittlin's novel is unique in Polish literature and is endowed with a universal message. Thirty-five years later Wittlin coined a special term for our murderous civilization, calling it "the cadaver civilization."

Similarly unorthodox from the "patriotic" point of view is Camus's argument in his last novel. In the chapter "Notes and Sketches" we read: "When my father was called to the colors, he had never seen France. He saw it and was killed. (What a modest family like mine has given to France.)" ⁹

There are other parallels as well. When The First Man appeared, many critics expressed their astonishment that Albert Camus was not ashamed to expose his humble roots. "What is less known, and what alters our overall view of Camus," wrote one reviewer, "is the emphasis he gives to the aliterate, basically ahistorical silence of the people from whom he sprang. It is one of Camus's admirable qualities that his family, which knew nothing of civilizations, history, or wars other than their immediate effects on family members, never caused him shame or self-doubt." ¹⁰

In one of Wittlin's texts we find this confession: "An authentic writer does not try violently to pull up his roots and transplant them to a foreign soil. Such an operation would place him in danger of being charged with pretentiousness, if not ridicule." ¹¹

Both writers were preoccupied with the theme of exile, and both wrote on this theme with passion. Both seemed to be destined to be exiles. Camus was a Frenchman, born in Algeria, and later a French Algerian in France. Because of his convictions he was alienated to a great degree from the society he was part of, "as silent," writes one critic, "as if he were in exile." ¹² In Camus's Plague the frequency of the word "exile" is second only to the word "plague"; in The First Man the eyes of the horses brought from France "were those of exiles." ¹³ A scholar writing about Camus's "Exile and the Kingdom" pointed to the "polarity emphasized in the title." ¹⁴ A very similar polarity is found in the title of Wittlin's essay on exile: "The Splendor and Squalor of Exile." For Józef Wittlin, a Jew in Poland, a fervent Catholic by choice, who never denied his Jewish roots, exile was a condition even before it became his fate. In his letter to Zofia Starowiejska-Morstinowa, written just before Christmas of 1928, Wittlin writes: "It is better to be a guest in a foreign country than in one's own." ¹⁵

Let us then take a closer look at the unknown heroes of the two unfinished novels written by men who were born and died as exiles.

Henri Cormery, the father of the main protagonist in The First Man was an Alsatian in Algeria, "an emigrant, child of emigrants," an orphan who only in his adult years learned how to read and write. "Hardened to fatigue, closemouthed, but easygoing and fair-minded." ¹⁶ An able man who, given the opportunity, learned everything about wine. Killed at the moment when he was for the first time on his way to gain a better life for himself and his family. His powerful protest against the random cruelty that he witnessed in the earlier war attests to his integrity.

Piotr Niewiadomski resembles Cormery in many ways. Orphaned early, with a Polish father, whom he never knew, hard-working, hoping for promotion at his railroad job but unhappy when he got it for the wrong reason, he also is called to arms when his somewhat stabilized situation at last promises him some moments of inner peace.

War breaks out in August. It comes at harvest time, breaking the natural cycle, and harvesting men instead of crops. Both draftees have already passed their service years and are called to arms in the second round of mobilization. Henry Cormery, born in 1885, is younger than Piotr Niewiadomski, born in 1873. Piotr Niewiadomski stands at the swearing-in ceremony on August 25, before the fall of Lvov on September 3, 1914; Henry Cormery has been mortally wounded at the first battle of the Marne that ended on September 11. He dies of these wounds a month later, on October 11.

There are many parallel images in the two books. The constable comes in Śniatyń county in Eastern Europe, just as he comes in Algeria, to notify both men of their mobilization: "Mysterious orders had arrived," writes Camus, "brought out into the bush by a sweating, weary constable, and they had to leave the farm where they were just getting ready to harvest the grapes." ¹⁷ In the Salt of the Earth we read: "Over the whole world gendarmes were spoiling people's appetites." ¹⁸

The news about the war is perceived by those that are affected as a dark night. For Henry's wife and Jacques' mother, whose perception is central to this line of the plot of The First Man: "Into the night of the world she could not imagine, and the history she did not know, a still darker night had just come." ¹⁹ In The Salt of the Earth Piotr " turned his back on the sky, the earth, and the falling night." ²⁰

In The First Man the parish priest Monsieur le Curé comes to the station in Bône for the draftees' departure; in Salt of the Earth the parish priest does not come.

The Biblical image of locusts invading the area, topoi of plague and annihilation, is elaborated in one book and allegorized in the other. In The First Man: "The war was there, like an evil cloud thick with dark menace, but you could not keep it from invading the sky, no more than you could stop the locusts or the devastating storms that would swoop down on the high plains of Algeria." ²¹ In The Salt of the Earth: " At dawn man swarmed in every town like a cloud of locusts." ²²

The scorching heat accompanies the draft in both novels. It is natural because of the season, yet this natural phenomenon is assigned an additional function, it dehumanizes: "men are abominable, especially under a ferocious sun,"--says the old doctor in The First Man.²³

The theme of playing down the severity of the conflict is underlined in both books. In The Salt of the Earth the constable reassures Piotr that before Christmas the war will be over. "He said 'before Christmas'; but he was really convinced that the war would be over in a month." ²⁴ The theme of a swift end to the war comes back time and again. In The First Man Lucie reminisces: "He would come back soon, that was what everyone was saying, the Germans would be punished, but in the meantime she had to find work." ²⁵

Even the major task that each narrator sets for himself is similar.

Józef Wittlin ends the "Prologue" of the Salt of the Earth with the unforgettable canto:

Unknown is the man who first lost his life in
this war. Unknown is the man who slew him.
Unknown is the man who fell last in this war.
My word shall raise him from the earth in which he lies (my emphasis)
and for this he will forgive me.
Unknown is the Unknown Soldier.

The narrator of The First Man prompted by the same impulse, creates the image of his father. After visiting his father's grave which for him is a grave of the "unknown man," unknown to him, he exhumes his image mostly from the scant memories of his illiterate and partially deaf mother. Certain parts of the narration are told from her point of view, and because she made her son visit the grave she is the initiator of the process. In The First Man Camus applies a device representative of pacifist literature to narrate the story from his mother's naive point of view. At the same time, we know that Camus's novel is to a great degree an autobiographical one, so it is not entirely a mystification, not merely a strategy.

Wittlin's protagonist is also illiterate. Showing the world through the unique perception of simple, uneducated people allows the writer a terrific opportunity to use the effect (device) of defamiliarization. But it also creates the opportunity to show the images through a clear lens, untarnished by propaganda cliché. These minds are more open to images than to abstraction, which makes these two voices poetic. In his commentary, Wittlin calls Piotr a poet.(

Asked by the stationmaster to hang the imperial war proclamation, Piotr Niewiadomski pastes them upside down, because for the first time he deals with posters without pictures. But his mistake, like any mistake, is also indicative of a deeper phenomenon--war is an abstraction, and it turns everything upside down.

When Jacques' mother receives the envelope with the notification of her husband's death she doesn't open it, because she cannot read it, she lies on her bed "for many hours, silent and without tears, squeezing the envelope in her pocket and staring into the dark at the misfortune she did not understand." ²⁶ Piotr handles his draft summons the same way. "The blue paper lay in Peter's motionless hands, like a pictured saint clasped between the stiff fingers of the dead. And suddenly he grew frightened of the paper which he could not understand." ²⁷

Camus's book argues that despite the fact that Henry Cormery is buried in a marked and cared for grave, he remains "unknown" to his family, his son, his wife. Soldiers dying in their young formative years are even unknown to themselves. He is one more Peter Unknown--Piotr Niewiadomski. What in Salt of the Earth is assigned to one character, in The First Man is distributed among three. "First man as a self-made man without a father" ²⁸ is like Niewiadomski-Unknown, nameless in a mass of many. In Camus's book the son and the father lead rootless and traditionless lives and are each a "first man". Piotr also thinks of himself as a "first man," however in a slightly different context. While waiting to be examined by the commission, he reflects on nakedness: "And suddenly Piotr Niewiadomski was ashamed of his nakedness, even as Adam was ashamed after he had eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." ²⁹ Nakedness, symbolizing vulnerability, is a not unimportant characteristic of a "first man."

The very notion underlying both titles is tightly connected with the earth, the name of the first man (Adam) derives from the word signifying earth. About the Salt of the Earth we read in Smith's Bible Dictionary: "In addition to the uses of salt already specified, the inferior sorts were applied as a manure to the soil, or to hasten the decomposition of dung" (Matthew V.13).

"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing, but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men." (Matthew V.13.) This quotation serves as a motto to Wittlin's novel. In The First Man Camus writes about men that "were destroyed in droves, and began to fertilize a narrow stretch of land?"³⁰

In both novels the link with the soil, the earth, rather than a country, is underscored in many ways. "Living blood reservoirs had to be examined before their contents were tapped. Therefore physicians listened to their murmur,? placed their ears against the sons of the earth, as though they were the earth itself," ³¹ writes Wittlin.

There is another, broader unifying theme, the mythologem of an orphaned child, ³² often presented in the myth where "the child-god is usually an abandoned foundling." ³³ This motif, present in both books, seems to be connected to the theme of the "unknown soldier."

Piotr Niewiadomski, a legitimate child, grew up without a father. His distant ancestor, however, must have been the son of the unknown, hence the last name Niewiadomski, corresponding with the "unknown soldier," and leading to the broader assumption about man's end and beginning. There is another fatherless child in this novel--Piotr's sister illegitimate child. Piotr loves his nephew and when the latter dies, it is as if he were orphaned for the second time. He himself is sterile and cannot have children. Finally, Piotr's lover Magda is an orphan. They are all "first men" to themselves. Even Dr. Jellinek, a rather unsympathetic figure, reminisces about his dead father. ³⁴

In the highly autobiographical The First Man, the theme of the orphan is equally significant. Jacques Cormery's father was orphaned, and exploited by his own siblings. What little we know about him, or perhaps precisely because we know so little about him, renders this theme proportionally critical. His son is orphaned by his death, and it is at this juncture where the theme of orphan and the theme of being unknown meet. In mythology very often an orphaned child, becomes a savior--an unknown soldier is also a savior because he gives his life for others.

In The First Man Jacques considers himself, and his other poor fatherless friend Pierre, with whom he plays on the grounds of the Home for Disabled Veterans, "children in short, unknown to and ignorant of God." ³⁵ In school, while listening to the story of the First World War, "he never made any but a theoretical connection with the father he never knew" ³⁶ These are the thoughts that come upon him when he thinks of the "father, whom he had never seen, whose very height he had never seen."

Similarly, Piotr, who inherited his name and a sheepskin coat from his father, "had never known his father." ³⁷ And later, when contemplating his sex act, Piotr recognizes the unknown father in his most natural instincts." To some extent, he was unconsciously fulfilling the duty laid on him as a heritage by his unknown Polish father--Niewiadomski." ³⁸ Jacques Cormery, "unable to reconstruct his father's identity," ³⁹ finds his father in himself as well, and his mother tells him that he looks like his father. But he also finds his father's legacy in his own physical revulsion from violence.

On his search for traces of his father's past, Jacques thinks about the French immigrants' arrival to Algeria: "to them it was the end of the world, between the deserted sky and the dangerous land." In this still unedited manuscript we find an asterisk after the word "land" and in the footnote the word "unknown." As if the author considered "unknown" the synonym of "dangerous."

In the Salt of the Earth the indignity of being "unknown" is also brought by the war upon the land itself. For security reasons Piotr is told to take the signboard off the station building. "To rob the station of its signboard was just the same as robbing a man of his name. [?] The duty assigned to him by the stationmaster shook Piotr's belief in the whole system of the universe. [?] All that remained was a lonely little building beside the tracks, without a name, without a head, without a soul." ⁴⁰ The notion that a name is the reflection of a soul goes back to the ancient Egyptians. ⁴¹

Piotr dislikes anonymity and namelessness. While carrying freight at the station, he "hated [?], the anonymous weight, more than he hated those to whom it belonged." ⁴² When he reflects on his childhood, we read: "In the Śniatyń district illnesses were nameless. Nameless, they attack man--nameless they passed." ⁴³

The theme of "the unknown" is equally painful to Jacques Cormery: "Yes, how they died! How they were still dying! In silence and away from everything, as his father had died in an incomprehensible tragedy far from his native land, after a life without a single free choice--from the orphanage to the hospital, the inevitable marriage along the way, a life that grew around him, in spite of him, until the war killed and buried him; from then and forever unknown to his people and his son, he too was returned to that immense oblivion that was the ultimate homeland of the man of his people, the final destination of a life that began without roots?"⁴⁴ And further on that page: "There was a mystery about that man, a mystery he had wanted to penetrate. But after all there was only the mystery of poverty that creates beings without names and without a past, that sends them into the vast throng of the nameless dead ?"⁴⁵

In the Salt of the Earth Magda wakes up crying from a nightmare and Piotr, "realized for the first time the orphan's misery, and his own, and the misery of all his generation,?" ⁴⁶

Camus examines the problem from all sides. In the following pages we find "silence of anonymity," "the country without name," the wish to escape and then "craving darkness and anonymity," "eternal anonymity," "illegible slabs in the cemetery." ⁴⁷ Even before entering the cemetery, "The traveler stopped in front of one of these shops to watch a bright-looking child in a corner who was doing his homework on a marble slab that had yet to be inscribed."⁴⁸ It is an image of immense symbolism.

Yearning to be "known," to shed this abysmal anonymity, is not alien to Piotr. He is overwhelmed by the thought that the Emperor might have personally sent him the draft order: "So the Emperor knows me? He wants me, and so he writes to me and calls me "Herr." "Herr Piotr Niewiadomski." ⁴⁹ Later when his name is entered into the register, Piotr again contemplates the fact that this name will go to the Emperor. But we know that even if it does, he will still be just an "unknown" because that's what his name signifies.

"Another variation on the [orphan] theme is when the mother shares the child's abandonment and solitude," writes Kerényi. ⁵⁰ In both novels this theme is differently distributed but elaborated with equal tenderness, and poverty does not impoverish the mother-son relationship.

In the Salt of the Earth it is the mother of Piotr, the unknown soldier, in The First Man it is the wife of a fallen soldier, the mother of the main protagonist. In both books the mother figure is the epitome of motherhood, and at the same time her image is exceptionally particular, artistically complete, emotionally charged.

If we can imagine that texts can converse with each other, a dialogue certainly exists between these two. In The First Man Camus makes the now famous statement: "Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks faint traces along the path to death." ⁵¹ Nevertheless, poor Piotr Niewiadomski experiences a very Proustian sensation while eating his first bowl of soup at the army base. He recalled how his mother, during the deadly sickness, brought him back to life by feeding him soup. The scene, permeated with intense lyricism, corresponds with many mother-related moments in The First Man. Interestingly enough, critics noticed that in this book for the first time Camus's cadence is longer, and the sentences are "a bit Proustian." ⁵²

We know that in Wittlin's own mythology "offering soup" has a redeeming function. Czesław Miłosz mythologized it further in his famous "Poetic Treatise," where he writes: "There Wittlin always puts a spoon of soup, into the crusted mouth of human hunger". ⁵³

Another aspect of the mother theme is the topic of the motherland, similarly treated in both novels. In each book protagonists are both confused about the motherland-fatherland notion, and totally alienated from it. Piotr Niewiadomski of Topory-Czernielica is called to defend the Austro-Hungarian Empire that is a total abstraction to him, as is France for Cormery, who died in the battle of the Marne. Piotr, loyal to the imperial railroad, is totally confused about what his other loyalties should be; he is lost in the labyrinth of nations, kingdoms and other units of Austria-Hungary. In his "Short Commentary to the Salt of the Earth Wittlin writes: "Certainly, had Piotr Niewiadomski had an ability to use in his thinking common metaphors, he would call Austria his mother, like many patriots of this or other countries. We know, however, that Piotr in his spiritual life had no use for clichéd metaphors. In general, he created his own metaphor and possessed his own mythology. Therefore the motherland for him was not even a step-mother." ⁵⁴

Camus deals with this topic on many levels, and on each of these levels he makes the reader realize the bitter truth--for his protagonists France is also not even a step-mother. It is this country that sends them all to death, "dressed in smart shining colors, straw hats on their heads, red-and-blue targets you could see for hundreds of meters?"⁵⁵

Jacques' friend Didier says to him: "Your father died for our country." But to Jacques this "our" is not inclusive as far as he is concerned, because he has no attic full of letters and portraits of ancestors, he does not call Joan D'Arc by her first name. ⁵⁶

The state of not knowing is characteristic of the exile. ⁵⁷ Jacques mother doesn't know what their country is . She is relieved to hear it's France, but she has to be told that. This knowledge comes to her from outside.

Yet they are very attached to their immediate geographic region, the so-called small motherland, even though there is always an obstacle that prevents total identification. Piotr is of mixed nationalities, Henry and his wife are immigrants, Jacques is the child of mixed immigrant parents.

Like Wittlin's protagonists, the young Jacques of The First Man sees himself totally outside the patriotic theme, regardless of the fact that his friend, his teacher, and even the government, sees him as privileged, or rather as deserving privilege, because his father died for the country.

In a literary sense the protagonists of both books share common origins. In his "Postscript to the Salt of the Earth Wittlin writes : "Piotr Niewiadomski as a fictional persona revealed himself to me in Paris only a few years after the war. ?? I saw him in Paris in 1928 on the shining asphalt of the Place de la Concorde?" Perhaps one of the reasons for that mysterious appearance of Piotr in Paris is the fact that France was the first country to raise the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and in this sense it is the fatherland to all unknown soldiers.

Perhaps the greatest gap between these two people is their anticipation in finding spiritual comfort in the face of death. In the interview quoted earlier Wittlin expressed his conviction that it is to those poor and simple people to whom Jesus, St. Francis and Gandhi come. And Piotr Niewiadomski's world view is built on essentially religious premises. The protagonist created by Camus lives and dies in a greater void, although critics did notice Camus's change of attitude toward the Judeo-Christian interpretation of the human condition. ⁵⁸ In the last section of The First Man, "Notes and Sketches," we read "His mother is Christ." We know that Henry Cormery was a consciously moral person, and perhaps in that respect lonelier than Piotr Niewiadomski.

Each of these figures, Piotr Niewiadomski and Henry Cormery, is a "first man," an "unknown soldier," an unknown exile in an unknown land and nameless reality. And, finally, each becomes "the salt of the earth."

Artykuł Anny Frajlich jest analizą porównawczą dwóch powieści traktujących o I Wojnie Światowej --Soli Ziemi Józefa Wittlina i Pierwszego Człowieka Alberta Camusa. W odróżnieniu od większości krytycznych prac poświęconych powieści Wittlina, autorka nie ogranicza się do analizy obrazu wojny, lecz traktuje tematykę wojenną jako ogólny kontekst, w ramach którego obydwaj pisarze przedstawiają zjawisko ludzkiej anonimowości zarówno na szerokim tle wydarzeń historycznych, jak i w węższym kontekście stosunków rodzinnych i indywidualnych kwestii samookreślenia i samopoznania. Tego rodzaju koncentracja pozwala Frajlich na naświetlenie szeregu wewnętrznych spójności decydujących o wielowymiarowości struktury tematycznej Soli Ziemi i Pierwszego Człowieka. Dyskusja obydwu utworów jest poprzedzona analizą artystycznych i osobistych przekonań ich autorów, które, według Frajlich, zbliżają obu pisarzy i jednocześnie stwarzają, solidniejsze od tych opartych wyłącznie na podobieństwach tematycznych, podstawy do porównania ich powieści.
Samo porównanie Soli Ziemi i Pierwszego Człowieka Frajlich opiera na analizie anonimowości bohaterów obu powieści. Autorka podkreśla fakty decydujące o specyfice tej anonimowości: ich przynależność do niższych klas społecznych, analfabetyzm, oraz charakterystyczna dla obywateli etnicznie zróżnicowanych monarchii i dla emigrantów niemożność identyfikacji z ideologią i propagandą wojenną. Każdy z tych faktów, zdaniem autorki, łączy wątki społecznej i politycznej anonimowości bohaterów z wątkiem anonimowości uczestników wojny, przez co idea Nieznanego Żołnierza w obu przypadkach zostaje pogłębiona ideą człowieka pozbawionego tożsamości, nieznanego nie tylko w czasie wojny, lecz i w czasie pokoju. Sieroctwo bohatera Soli Ziemi jak też sieroctwo dwóch głównych postaci Pierwszego Człowieka jest przez Frajlich rozpatrywane jako kolejny aspekt anonimowości nadający obrazowi bezimiennego rekruta wymiar "pierwszego człowieka", pozbawionego rodzinnych korzeni i budującego życie od podstaw. Autorka zwraca szczególną uwagę na podobieństwa pomiędzy mitem sieroty i mitem Nieznanego Żołnierza, podkreślając wagę tego związku w procesie rozszerzenia zasięgu problematyki anonimowości poza ramy tematyki wojennej. Paralelizm motywów bezimienności i motywów ziemi, dostrzeżony przez autorkę w obydwu powieściach, pozwala Frajlich na interpretację mitu "soli ziemi" w podobnie rozszerzonym, niemalże egzystencjalnym kontekście.
Frajlich zwraca też uwagę na podobną w obu pracach głęboko negatywną interpretację zjawiska bezimienności, połączoną z dążeniami bohaterów do przezwyciężenia ich bezimiennego statusu. Centralność tematyki anonimowości w połączeniu z jego negatywną oceną pozwala autorce na zestawienie Soli Ziemi i Pierwszego Człowieka jako powieści stawiających sobie za cel rekonstrukcję ich bezimiennych bohaterów: w przypadku Camusa jest to głównie rekonstrukcja osobistych więzi, podczas gdy Wittlin rekonstruuje całą klasę bezimiennych Huculskich bohaterów.

(ks)

Rozdział książki: Between Lvov, New York, and Ulysses' Ithaca: Józef Wittlin - Poet, Essayist, Novelist, ed. by Anna Frajlich. Toruń-New York 2001 - Archiwum Emigracji T.10.

Więcej: Russel Wilkinson talks to Catherine Camus about Albert Camus' The First Man

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