KMT 2020 nr 2 Download PDF

The letters and reports of Priest Jan Glica

Cite: , Z listów i reportaży ks. Jana Glicy, "Kultura - Media - Teologia", 2020( 41) nr 2, s. 209-225.

DOI: 10.21697/kmt.41.10

The following paper discusses the problem of the relationship between the missionary Jan Glica, a Polish migrant in Brazil, and the representatives of indigenous peoples in the state of Paraná. I have highlighted the significance of caesuras, which are characteristic for these relationships. I also drew attention to the differences in the perception of Polish and Brazilian nature. Oczarowany misjami. Listy z Brazylii [Fascinated by the missions. Letters from Brazil] by Jan Glica is a book about the narrator’s life as well as the people the narrator met. Reportages and letters, which are included in the volume, illustrate the everyday pastoral work of the missionary, Priest Jan Glica. Thanks to their heterogeneous form and authenticity, his works are a source of many cognitively valuable insights about the life of the immigrant in Brazil in the twentieth century. Although they belong to the canon of emigrant literature, they have a separate place in it. It results from the different reasons that made the priest leave the country and the goals he had set before he arrived in a foreign land. Jan Glica did not leave his homeland under compulsion, but due to his commitment to the church’s evangelizing mission. Because of the distinctive reasons for emigration, a person’s experience, which affects the recognition of the surrounding reality, is reconfigured. The emigration motif functioning in the native culture is modified and this process is reflected in the construction of the literary work.

About authors

Sylwia Wójcik

ORCID: 0000-0002-8209-5810