Voice from the Wound: Selected Post-War Works by Szymon Laks as a Composer’s Path to Resilience

Szymon Laks was a Polish composer of Jewish origin, which led to his imprisonment in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp. In the years preceding the World War II, he wrote mainly neoclassical works, whereas after 1945, his individual idiom has been established, shaped by tragic events and clearly readable in such works as String Quartet no. 3, Huit chants populaires juifs et al. The article aims at exposing that in his post-war music Laks encoded a unique message – a testimony of trauma. According to the trauma theory, it not only enabled the composer’s recovery process, but also became an appeal to decode the message demanding the preservation of the Jewish and Polish culture – the two identities that suffered significantly during the war. Moreover, in the light of Glenn Richardson’s metatheory, the post-war output of Laks, including the Poème for violin and orchestra and his literary works, can be interpreted as a path to resilience.