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The paper is a critical review of the book entitled New Urban Poetics (ed. M. Roszczynialska, K. Wądolny-Tatar, Kraków 2015), which, in the author’s opinion, is a valuable source of new interpretative concepts in the field of geopoetics and ‘philological branch’ of urban studies. The book is a result of a conference held in Kraków in the autumn of 2013. It provides an overview of new theoretical ideas...
The article reflects upon the way in which writings by W.G. Sebald mediate between the constructing of space and hybridity. Specifically, the function of photography within the narration is analyzed here. In conclusion, photographs, despite their strong referential charge, do not in any way diminish the undoubted textualization of space in Sebald’s works.
The article concentrates on the existential-phenomenological reading of Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki’s poetry as it was proposed by Grzegorz Tomicki in his work "Po obu stronach lustra. O poezji Eugeniusza Tkaczyszyna-Dyckiego". It concentrates on showing the tension between creation and authenticity in Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki’s poetry and on the resulting difficulty in using traditional...
The article reflects upon the works of Andrzej Bart and Zbigniew Kruszyński, concentrating on how urban space is correlated with the category of identity. The most useful here then seems geopoetic reading with its concepts of history’s influence upon geography (and different visions of Polish identity), biography and space identity, mythologizing urban space (Łódź in Bart, Radom and Wrocław in Kruszyński),...
The article analyzes spatial represenatation of New York as presented in Janusz Głowacki’s works after his decision to emigrate in 1981. The literary assimilation of space is realized through three narrative strategies, i.e. stereotyping, walking, and naming/writing mode. The author of the article proposes geopoetic, anthropological, and sociological reading of his various texts (autobiography, essays,...
Relying on post-war biographies of Henryk Sienkiewicz, the article provides an insight into how his life as a writer was modelled through recurring similarities and differences of representation. Both factual and methodological portrayals seem uniform. In 1954 the biographical calendar presented by Julian Krzyżanowski became a point of reference for all following profiles of Sienkiewicz. Moreover,...
The article attempts to recognize the most distinctive aspects of spatial representations in literary works from the 20th and 21st centuries. It analyzes the narrative strategies employed in the following novels Terminal by Marek Bieńczyk, Sońka by Ignacy Karpowicz and Ludzka rzecz by Paweł Potoroczyn. Consequently, it shows that textual exploration of space which is foreign, other, untameable may...
The Other Side (1909) is the only novel by an Austrian painter and illustrator, Alfred Kubin. His work epitomizes the modernist concept of art synthesis. Kubin, drawing from the aesthetics of grotesque, creates an amalgam of apparently detached forms of representation, literature and painting. The Other Side uses surrealist humour and nightmarish motifs of onirism to convey the existential anxiety...
The article analyzes the column written by Henryk Sienkiewcz which concerns betting on horse races in Paris in 1878. Roger Caillois’ categories such as mimicry, alea, ilinx and agon, prove that horse racing contains all aspects of modern gambling, which turns it into a relict of dangerous, magical thinking.
The article re-evaluates the dominating view of the clearly negative relationship between two writers, Sienkiewicz and Zola. It presents the implications of Sienkiewicz’s 1878 visit to France, and further, it reconstructs his opinions that chronologically coincided with Zola’s greatest popularity. The text provides an analysis of Sienkiwicz’s remarks on Zola’s style, and it proves further that his...
The paper summarizes some remarks on the metaphor of map, as it is used within the field of geopoetics. The first of its meanings refers to representation of literary space in a work of fiction. The second is often applied to describe an imaginary vision of real geographic (political, economic etc.) space. It is therefore determined (or “created”) by culture, or rather by innumerable cultural texts,...
The article offers the reading of Michał Androsiuk’s "Biały koń", "Wagon drugiej klasy" in the context of remembrance, addressing the question of identity of Belarusians in Podlasie region. A borderland town of Hajnówka becomes the place where individual and collective memory, History, and imagination intersect. Finally, it appears that the long-lasting cohesive national identity,...
The article is inspired by Marcin Kącki’s reportage, Białystok. Biała siła czarna pamięć, which recovers the disturbing memory of Jewish population in Białystok and Podlasie region. The text aims at juxtaposing two theses. One, postulated by Kącki, claims that the local “failure” to remember does not stem from pre-war anti-semitism. The other, formulated by Tymothy Snyder, presupposes that placing...
Textualisation of places recovers memory of the territories which seem marginalized, excluded, places which belong to “the historically mute”. The article exemplifies the concepts of rescue history in cultural texts which originated in the region of Podlasie. One of them is Dana Łukasińska’s drama Antyhona, the story of a borderland Polish-Belarusian village in the years 1942–1947. Next is a performance...
The paper analyzes the figures of absence, connected with both the rhetoric of emptiness and poetics of disappearance. It is moreover an attempt to classify the discursive techniques that aim to represent the textual “gone” (places that no longer exist, were destroyed, and those in which the subject is present no more). Attention is also devoted to performative dimension of writing, which produces...
The thesis of a symbolic significance of space for a particular community underscores the integrating role of place as a cultural value. The author analyses the connection between the space of French suburbs and the identity of their inhabitants, especially those of immigrant extraction. Therefore, she refers to selected texts of the rich output of French hip-hop artists. She places the pieces in...
The article discusses different approaches towards the theme of pastoral in tree narratives by Andrzej Stasiuk: Opowieściach galicyjskich (translated as Tales of Galicia), Jadąc do Babadag and Nie ma ekspresów przy żółtych drogach. Because the works were published over the period of two decades, one may detect the dynamic changes in how the countryside is portrayed. In the early 1990s Stasiuk incorporates...
The article concerns the problem of revenge in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy. It was distinguished and described two models of it. The first one is spontaneous, irrational, and emotional; the second one – i.e. clan revenge – is conceptual, and perfectly executed. The article examines such problems as: a circulations of violence, kinds of personal engagements in it (as subject, object and victim), and...
The text defines the concept of “unclosed territories”, the third category proposed by the author which completes his methodology of encoding, reading and interpreting geographical places. The author’s argument holds that physical accessibility of space does not automatically imply its openness. Further, in order to understand the visited space one must walk in the footsteps left by others. These...
The article presents the image of Jerusalem of the 1950s. Despite the realistic topography of the Holy City in My Michael, the line between the imagery of urban space and the world of the protagonist’s inner experiences has been blurred. The labirynth-like space of Jerusalem becomes not only the material equivalent of Hanna’s deteriorating mental health, but also a universal metaphor of loneliness,...
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