Reading (in) the Holocaust. Malgorzata Wójcik-Dudek

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      He that can do very well without thinking chooses to take shortcuts. He gulps books unreflectingly and unemotionally, and seeks to defeat his master by destroying his secrets inscribed on china tablets. What meanings are conveyed in the name Alojzy? It is a name of Germanic origin and means “omniscient,” deriving from al-wis, all-weisse (“all-knowing/wise”).¹⁵² He that is called so is also ←66 | 67→branded with pride, which makes him ignore the truth that study, i.e. interpretation, is inextricable from patience and readiness for encounter. He embodies an aversion to constant hypothesising and inferring. The rebellion of Alojzy, the rebellion of a machine, puts the time of free imagination and dialogue to an end.¹⁵³

      This “exchange” of values inevitably brings to mind the birth of fascism and the outbreak of the Second World War. The destruction of the community which Mr Inkblot and his students have formed results in deconstructing the ancient order reflected not only in the relationship between the student and the teacher, but also in the relations among individual signs – letters that form the text. The cracking of the china tablets with the secrets recorded on them reverberates with a range of cultural references, both bringing to mind time-honoured thought traditions and offering a historical context-specific topical allusion. For one, it re-enacts shevirat ha kelim (the shattering of the vessels), and for the other, it evokes the burning of books in Germany in 1933 and, more generally, the destruction of dissenting works by totalitarian systems.

      As Alojzy wrecks books and the china tablets, language is also annihilated, because “if in the name of God, Shaddai, one single point, the tiny letter Yod, were lacking, there would remain the word Shod, that is to say, devastation. It is by virtue of this dot that the awful power of God, which at any moment could utterly devastate and annihilate the world, brings about the world’s redemption instead. This dot is the primeval originating point of creation.”¹⁵⁴

      Alojzy violates not only the order of letters, but also the order of law; he does not follow the letter of the law, so to speak. If books have not escaped annihilation, the end of the Academy is also possible. And without the Academy, all the points of reference which have so far provided the children in Mr Inkblot’s care with a sense of security will be gone. Consequently, the eradication of the Academy can be construed in several ways: as the end of childhood, the loss of the Temple or the outbreak of war. Still, all of these interpretations entail one ←67 | 68→common ramification; namely, Adaś and the other boys are doomed to be exiles and their journey will become a real test of the values which their master sought to instil in them.

      One of the final episodes of The Academy of Mr Inkblot deserves closer scrutiny. Filip, the constructor of Alojzy, steps into the building and uses his razor to cut off, one by one, the candleflames glimmering on the Christmas tree. Darkness descends upon the Academy, and with it upon the entire world.¹⁵⁵ Alojzy’s rebellion is not only an act of defection from ancient principles, but also an expression of the desire to obscure fundamental meanings which are metonymically rendered in letters that form continuous sequences of words.¹⁵⁶ Therefore Adaś must go and gain light, read: ink, which will make it possible to record the world as letters are guarantees of its existence. Ultimately then, his quest will be a restitutive one, which means that its aim is to restore to the world the shape it had before the disaster. Mr Inkblot and Adaś face the difficult task of leading the world out of darkness, which epitomises stagnation, ignorance and the impossibility of writing, and into light, which is identified with freedom, knowledge and the writing of a narrative.