Jalu Kurek's S.O.S. as an apocalyptic novel

Jalu Kurek, a prominent member of the Cracow avant-garde, is the author of several novels. This article discusses the undeservedly neglected S.O.S., published in 1927, and suggests that its weird plotting and literary mockery is in fact an apocalyptic narrative. It has a place, it is argued, in the 'catastrophist' trends which were on the rise in the Polish literature of the late 1920s and 1930s. It should be read in the context of a growing sense of decline and crisis of European society, which, on the one hand, drew on the cultural pessimism of the turn of the 19th century, and, on the other hand, was a reaction against the wave of modernization that was sweeping the world. As this analysis shows, Jalu Kurek's S.O.S. is deeply ambivalent about the onslaught of modernity.