Peter Skrzynecki Essay

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The migrant experience engenders growth and cultivation of the human identity, however the aspects of cultural belonging and the emotional remonstrance affiliated with adaptation, assimilation and personal transfiguration are concomitant to the journey. Peter Skrzynecki's poems ‘Postcard’ and ‘Feliks Skrzynecki’ from his acclaimed ‘Immigrant Chronicle’ capture the aspects associated with the migrant experience in vivid detail, his abstract use of motifs, personification and metaphors explicitly mirroring these concepts, the incongruent and intrinsic nature of human response to belonging and change prominent in the world of the persona. The migratory experience illuminated within ‘Postcard’ and ‘Feliks Skrzynecki’ epitomises the struggles of …show more content…
Skrzynecki's poem ‘Postcard’ conceptualises in rich detail the feelings of cultural detachment and isolation, from an individual who feels liable and obligated for the malnourishment of this connection. ‘Postcard’ embodies the symbolic ambivalence Peter feels about his cultural heritage, yet delves the persistent, inexorable affinity to his heritage that he is reluctant to embrace. The motif of a postcard, ‘A postcard sent by a friend haunts me’, highlights the essence of lamentation that responds to the insistence of cultural recognition. The symbolism of the postcard romanticises a destination, but its proportion also diminishes it and stipulates the sense of temporary dwelling rather than permanence. This transpires his Polish heritage as a distant ‘remnant’ (Feliks Skryznecki, line 37) of the past, and underpins the beguiling quality of the postcard in demanding acknowledgment. The evocative verb of ‘haunts’ conveys the persona’s inability to refuse the magnetism of his homeland, implying connotations of death and prior existence. This infers that the persona’s memory and connection to is homeland is eroded and fragile. Skrzynecki galvanises the aspect of cultural disjointment in the rhetorical oxymoron, ‘What

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