The aim of this article is the analysis of the imagined topographies of the East in the works of Andrzej Stasiuk. Territorial imagologies of this writer create a field of interferences between the real and the imagined, conditioned by local perspective. For this reason the image of the East in Stasiuk’s prose includes both the travel experience as well as cultural stereotypes. Consequently, this territorial imagology is the example of the imagined counter-geography, created from an internal point of view, and the writing itself becomes a specific place of memory.
The article deals with representations of Scandinavia in Polish literature from the 1980s to the second decade of the 21st century. The basic claim of the article is that a shift in the Polish imagination from the West to the North has occurred through literature and growing public interest. This shift began with efforts to transform the initial stereotype of Scandinavia as a land of prosperity. In subsequent stages, the imaginary was expanded by literature to include the themes of equality, social trust and self-correcting modernity. Complicating the image of Scandinavia made it into a viable alternative to Western modernity.
Artykuł jest próbą odczytania twórczości Leo Lipskiego (inaczej niż robiono to dotychczas) poprzez kategorie przestrzenne i narzędzia geopoetyki. Wskazuje na istotną ewolucję, jaka dokonywała się w tym pisarstwie, polegającą na odejściu od penetrowania doświadczeń wewnętrznych ku geograficznym dominantom organizującym sensy kolejnych dzieł. Odwołując się do pojęć wprowadzonych wcześniej przez badaczy w innym kontekście (Małgorzaty Czermińskiej „miejsce autobiograficzne” i Edwarda Saida „geografia wyobrażona”), proponuje uzupełnienie taksonomii pierwszego z nich o kategorię „miejsca traumatycznego”, w przypadku zaś drugiego wskazuje na możliwość innych zastosowań. W prozie Lipskiego geografia wyobrażona manifestuje się bowiem poprzez kreację „miejsca wyobrażonego uprawdopodobnionego”. Kategorie te pozwalają także widzieć prozę Lipskiego jako szczególny przypadek literatury wygnańców.
EN
The article is an attempt to read the works of Leo Lipski (unlike until now) through spatial categories and geopoetical tools. It points out to the significant evolution taking place in this writing, which consisted in moving away from penetrating internal experiences to geographic dominants organising the meanings of subsequent works. Referring to the concepts previously introduced by researchers in different contexts (Małgorzata Czermińska “autobiographical site” and Edward Said “imagined geography”), the author proposes supplementing the taxonomy of the former with a category of “traumatic place”, while in the case of the latter he indicates the potential of employing other sets of applicability. In Lipski’s prose, the imagined geography manifests itself through the creation of a “place imagined as probable”. These categories also allow Lipski’s prose to be seen as a special case of literature of the exiled.
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