Otherness that deserves to be protected. Empathy built upon distance

The article is a review of Krystyna Pietrych's book "Co poezji po bólu. Empatyczne przestrzenie lektury" (Łódź 2009) [What good pain and suffering bring in poetry. Emphatic dimensions of reading]. Since the reviewed book presents a bold and, to a large extent, novel approach to personalistic reading — based on a subjective, compassionate experience of an encounter with uncognizable and unreductible otherness of tormented man-poet, the reviewer focuses on the issues viewed as the most important for the method of emphatic reading adopted by the author. E. Winiecka analyses aesthetical and epistemological, as well as axiological possibilities and risks that emphatic criticism opens up for reexamination. Formulates her own opinion on the analytical method used by K. Pietrych in examining poetry, which is a recording of one's mind in agony and suffering experienced by seven authors: Aleksander Wat, Zbigniew Herbert, Miron Białoszewski, Stanisław Barańczak, Janusz Szuber, as well as Julian Przyboś and Anna Świrszczyńska. Outlines the methodological perspectives of the discussed work that traces the stages in the formation of literary depiction and representation of suffering. The text is also an attempt at defining and indicating the cognitive perspectives of emphatic criticism