Abstract
The poetic work of Aleksander Wat has enjoyed unfl agging popularity for the last 25 years.
Critical appreciations of his work invariably emphasize a strong connection between his poetic
work and some elements of his biography, i.e. detention in NKVD prisons, deportation to Soviet
Central Asia, and the pain and stress of an incurable illness in the late fi fties and sixties. This article
argues that the key to his verse can be found the concept of somatopoetry which takes into account
both the heightened awareness of the body and the sensuality of Wat’s lyrical utterance. More
specifi cally, this article attempts to draw an acoustic map of the poet’s verse written between 1957
and 1967, using the tools of f musicology, cultural anthropology of things and audio-anthropology.
Drawing on Andrzej Hejmej’s concept of musicality Type 2 (thematization of music in a literary
composition), the article tries to trace the presence of instruments in Wat’s work and assess their
phonic and cultural roles in the creation of meaning. Finally, the article claims that the phonic layer
beneath the references to instruments forms a track that can be described as a route to the poet’s
death.
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