An Odyssey without Homecoming

Abstract

Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the impact of war, occupation, and the Holocaust on Stanisław Lem's literary work. This article attempts to further explore this subject. Its aim is to show how Lem in Powrót z gwiazd [Return from the stars, 1961] depicts the return from space travel as analogous to coming home from war. This analogy is based on a complex interplay between the science fiction narrative on the one hand and references to the Homeric epic poem The Odyssey on the other. The article highlights some peculiarities of this intertextual fabric of Return from the Stars. From this point of view, the science fiction work forms, in Adorno's term, a “constellation” with the epic tale. In this constellation the science fiction narrative exposes in its transtextual interplay with the Greek tradition the deheroization of the hero as well as the ambiguities of a biopolitically organized society in the future. With the transtextual reassessment of the mythical narrative and the emerging literary representation of an odyssey without homecoming, Lem's novel exemplifies a fundamental dismantling of positivity. Seen from this angle, the science fiction novel can be situated in the context of postwar Polish literature which in its attempts to come to terms with the traumatic experiences of war and occupation challenges or even rejects a cultural heritage of traditions and values that have—in the wake of World War II—lost their immanent value.