WOMEN’SWRITINGONLINE ISSN 1798-3835 ISSUE NO. 1, 2009 POLAND UNDER FEMINIST EYES: RESEARCH IN LITERARY AND FEMINIST STUDIES 99 “THE TIME OF VISIONARY ARTISTS HAS COME TO AN END?” MANUELA GRETKOWSKA’S LITERARY AND POLITICAL ACTIVITY AGNIESZKA MROZIK In her book Revindications: Woman Reading Today (Rewindykacje. Kobieta czytająca dzisiaj, 2002), Inga Iwasiów noted: “the revolution began with women. But it did not result in the takeover of the ‘male text.’ Rather, at the beginning, in the questioning of such texts. In enthusiastic speaking in a full voice” (2002, 21). Iwasiów was referring not only to a revolution in belles-lettres, with its real “explosion of women’s writing,” 1 but also to the broadly understood humanities, with gender studies and feminist criticism which flourished as part of it (in the 1990s many books and articles addressing these issues were published), as well as in public life, in which women held many prominent positions in politics, culture and non- governmental bodies. Unfortunately, as Iwasiów has noticed, it was men who soon started to capitalize on the women’s revolution. In the field of politics this capitalization was connected with the rise of nationalist discourse which made women its hostages, suffice it to mention the hot debates on abortion, maternity leave or women’s pensions, and, in literature, with the division into male high-brow writing and female popular fiction: “Boys are leaders in high-brow literature. Women’s destiny is to write popular tales for other women, imperfect minor works, trifles limitedly edited” (27). Przemysław Czapliński is even harder on women writers. According to him, women, both in literature and public life, consumed the fruits of their revolution: stopped discussing, arguing, decided to speak “conventionally, properly, agreeably” 1 Manuela Gretkowska, Olga Tokarczuk, Natasza Goerke, Izabela Filipiak, Zyta Rudzka, Hanna Kowalewska and others.