Le conte dans la poésie catastrophiste : Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński et Tadeusz Gajcy

In the present article an attempt is made to describe the use of fairy tale in catastrophist poetry, focusing more specifically on Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński and Tadeusz Gajcy’s works. Both poets allude to the despair of the Second World War by contrasting the idyllic Arcadia of fairytale world with the hopeless universe of the apocalyptic reality. Unconnected with the reality, fairy tale may seem unattainable, like an unseizable dream. But it can also be the victim of the omnipresent evil of the war and decomposes from the inside, unable to avoid its baleful power. A careful analysis of Baczyński and Gajcy’s works shows that this subtle relationship between fairy tale and evil or death recurs in their poetry, and is even widespread in their period. The popularity of this strategy raises therefore the question of the existence of a separate category that could be called ‘catastrophist fairy tale’. The paper is divided into three parts: the first part is devoted to Baczyński, the second one — to Gajcy and the third one offers a synthetic reflection on the notion of ‘catastrophist fairy tale’.