The author analyses Donat Kirsch’s essay Elaborat – debiuty lat siedemdziesiątych. This Polish, non well-known writer of the 1970s describes the literature of that period, especially the trend known as “the young prose” and tries to explain how it emerged, developed and disappeared. His discourse is built on opposition “live-dead”, characteristic for Polish Modernism, what is more, it combines avant-garde concepts of literature and Foucault’s terms such as language and discourse, which is quite unique. Kirsch says that modernity obscures language and makes it almost non-useable, so the novel, in particular the experimental novel, should deal with that fact. Such demand is utopian but necessary, otherwise literature could not cope with reali...