Gliwice – zapomniany mikrokosmos. Semiotyka przestrzeni miasta w polskiej i niemieckiej prozie współczesnej

• Authors: Kornelia Ćwiklak

Title variants

EN

Gliwice: A Forgotten Microcosm. The Semiotics of a City Space in Contemporary Polish and German Prose

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

This text contains an analysis of the literary ways of creating a city, carried out on the basis of the literary works of Polish and German writers who chose Gliwice and its vicinity as the background of their plot. What is important here is the historical, social and cultural context of the depicted works. Gliwice played a similar role to Gdańsk, which is often forgotten nowadays. In the 20th century both cities several times became the flashpoints in European politics and were stigmatized with the course of the events which started World War II; both are located near the Polish-German borderline and both appeared in literature thanks to Polish and German writers. After the war both cities were elevated to the rank of myth through the novels written by renowned German writers and later also through the works of Polish authors. This inconspicuous and non-poetic industrial city has been presented in literature, however, it cannot be compared to the myth of Rome, Paris or London. Horst Bienek’s tetralogy, which serves in this analysis as a benchmark for the texts of Polish writers, played the most important role in establishing the literary myth of Gliwice. Through the writings of Adam Zagajewski, Julian Kornhauser, Piotr Lachmann, Stefan Szmutko and Henryk Waniek Gliwice has become an important, however still underestimated place on the map of Polish culture. The text consists of three parts. It begins with a sub-chapter entitled City as a Research Subject: Introductory Comments which presents important theoretical refl ections on the city. The second sub-chapter, entitled Gliwice: A City of the Beginning, shows the signifi cance of this city in Bienek’s tetralogy and in the contemporary Polish initiation prose. The primary focus here is on how literature employs the work of memory and how the space is created. The third sub-chapter Silesian Myth is devoted to the growth of the significance of Silesia in contemporary Polish culture. The work confronts and analyses the character and the components of two myths of Gliwice: created by German and Polish literature and culture. One of them is the myth of the decline of German Silesia which was established at the end of (and as a result of) World War II; the other – the myth of the gradual death of the culture of industrialized Upper Silesia in the 1970s and 1980s. The work also stresses the unusual cultural revival of Upper Silesia in recent years which is reflected in the books discussed.

Keywords

EN

Comparative literature; Gliwice in literature; Polish and German contemporary prose; The semiotics of a city

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego
• Journal: Rocznik Komparatystyczny
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 2
• Pages: p. 43-64

Contributors

author

Kornelia Ćwiklak

• Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, Wydział Pedagogiczno-Artystyczny w Kaliszu, ul. Nowy Świat 28/30, 62-800 Kalisz