Paper short abstract:

My paper will be an attempt at representing the literary vision of the interreligious and social transgression of Frank’s heresy in Olga Tokarczuk’s “The Books of Jacob”. Therefore I will try to analyse her book as projection of an alternative model of the Polish community, memory and identity .

Paper long abstract:

Scooping the Nike reward for “The Books of Jacob”, at the time of the migration crisis in 2015 Tokarczuk said that her awarded book is “a metaphor of what was happening at the gates of Europe”. And Poles as a nation, who believed that it was fighting “for your freedom and ours”, didn’t pass the exam. According to Tokarczuk, “The Books of Jacob” reminds us how difficult it is to assimilate, what costs are borne by the newcomers to get through. But it also says that ethnically pure societies do not exist.

Alfred Whitehead said that religion is the deepest sort of loyalty to the world. For Tokarczuk it is also the deepest sort of contestation. Each heresy represents an idea of change to the world. Deconstruction of an existing faith leads immediately to the new ideas for life and society. It leads to a contest of the old concepts and their replacement with the new ones. The appearance of the heresy is always revolutionary and terrifying.

According to Tokarczuk a change of the perception of the religious order is at the same time a challenge against all human order. The heresy undermines the obviousness of current law and leads to a rebellion. Jacob Frank started his mission in Smyrna from a discussion about the dark side of God. The thought of God’s imperfection or absence or disinterest in the Creation changes the view of the world and of the other people. It also changes the accountability for disciples’ actions. For Tokarczuk it is the most fascinating factor in the story of Jacob Frank. The mystic experience – the descent of the Holy Spirit (Ruach ha-Kodesh) on the group of people in a religious trans becomes the foundation of a great rebellion with its transgressive structures and institutions.