Feliks Skrznecki Analysis

Peter Skryzenecki’s poem, ‘Feliks Skrzynecki, has two comparable contexts. It deals with the issue of generational relationships, in this case father and son and the issue of adaptation, from an old European culture into Australian society. In both cases tensions exist. The issue of generational tension pervades throughout the poem as the personas, comes to question his “gentle fathers“ values, “I often wondered how he existed” and reflects, how he is “happy as I have never”. This is furthered through the idiomatic reference, he “kept pace only with the Joneses of his own minds making” which registers Feliks’ as a simple man who is indifferent to the standards set by his neighbours. Language operates as a central motif in the poem and develops as the persona passes through the passage of time. Initially through “remnants of a language I inherited unknowingly” a link is formed between the persona and his Polish heritage. However over time he becomes increasingly disconnected from his father and assimilates into Australian society. Language again acts in the point of realisation, (“at thirteen stumbling over tenses in Caesar’s Gallic war I forgot my first Polish word”) which signifies a terrible transition within the personas world as he is losing his native tongue and leaving his fathers world behind. The metaphor as he “watched me pegging my tents further and further south of Hadrian’s Wall” denotes the persona leaving his father’s northern culture behind; the wall itself gives representation to the ever-increasing language barrier between father and son. Tragically his father becomes figuratively “like a dumb prophet” no longer able to