‘Bright Reference Point of Our Youth’: Bondy, Podsiadło and the Redefinition of the Underground

Abstract

Polish writer Jacek Podsiadło’s story of a fictitious pilgrimage to Bratislava to find Egon Bondy, the one-time guiding spirit of the Prague underground, begins in the style of an epiphany: ‘And suddenly we knew that we would go to Bratislava, to Egon, the bright reference point on the gloomy firmament of our youth, who with his shiny red polka-dot tie lit up many a dark night’¹ (Podsiadło, 2008, p. 245). The story was published in 2008 and turns out to be a series of reflections about Bondy, writing, art in general, cowboys and Indians, friendship, chance and death, a neighbour with her leg in a cast, Bratislava, and the joy that can come from the unreserved admiration evoked in the story’s title: Total and realistic thanksgiving pilgrimage to the holy relics of Egon Bondy, father of our fathers and apostle of healing work, in the year of our Lord 1352 according to the Rhaeto-Romanic calendar (Podróz dziękczynno-błagalna, totalna i realistyczna do swiętych relikwii Egona Bondy’ego, Ojca Ojców naszych i apostoła uzdrawiaj?acej pracy, roku Panskiego 1352 według numeracji retorumunskiej).