Znaki ludzkiego losu. (O funkcji porównań w prozie Herlinga-Grudzińskiego)

The aim of the present analysis is the search for the essential features of poetics and the style of writing of one of the most fascinating Polish 20th century writers. Style-creating role of comparisons seen as semantico-syntactic figure is expressed by the constant and consequent construction of pictures by means of expression, the lexical (code) value of which, together with the additional senses, associationally connoted, forms the semantic space which is axiologically homogeneous. The core of this space is formed by such notions as SORROW, DYING, DESPAIR. On the one hand, comparison marks the elements of depicted world (comparatum), on the other hand it (comparans) allows us to describe them in terms of universal ethical space, trough many events and concrete experience (individual experience). Comparison allows us to describe different phenomena in many ways revealing all subtleties. Simultaneously, it allows us to emphasize the analogies between the phenomena apparently different. As a linguistic figure, comparison appears then to be the stylistic and compositional dominant which asceribes do G. Herling-Grudziński's works the character of parable; i.e., the universal story about the drama of human existence.