This analysis of Andrzej Stasiuk's novel 'Jadac do Babadag' (Driving to Babadag) is undertaken from a narratological, genological and philosophy-of-history standpoint. It attempts at describing the operations carried out by the writer on the story he has authored. Narration is recognized as being enchanted and extrapolated from the figure of a photograph which forms a fetish but also, an inspiration for the space being described and for how time is reflected upon. As the engine of the narrative and actual reason for taking a trip (the photo taken by André Kertész), inspiration of a narrative method, the way of coding the reality and a figure which can best describe a human's existence in time and space - according to Stasiuk's concept - photograph(y) shows a tragic tear between the need to record things and death, between an uncertain prospect of infiniteness and mortality.
This article explores the specific biographical and literary/intertextual relationship between Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski and Witold Gombrowicz. Their biographic relations are unclear: Herling-Grudzinski first met Gombrowicz between the two world wars but did not renew the acquaintance with Witold when WW2 was over, although both authors were contributing at that time to the Paris-based 'Kultura' monthly. The reason might have been that Gombrowicz's ideological and philosophical stance was unacceptable to him. Hence, Herling-Grudzinski's continual engagement in polemics with Gombrowicz, which actually started in 1938 with his highly critical review of the novel 'Ferdydurke', and was subsequently continued in his multivolume diary 'Dziennik pisany noca'. The dispute was formally expressed in the area of the poetics of diary but concerned issues more fundamental than that: the way literature is (to be) understood, the writer's duty with respect to (a) community and, first and foremost, the concept of reality and a model of subjectivity (human being).
A selection of reviews on the Spanish translation of Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz, published 1947-1948 in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Cuba. The authoress has translated and edited the articles collected and wrote a foreword thereto.
The post-colonial world outlook has created a novel research perspective enabling to renew the way literature had been viewed hitherto. Changes in approaching literary text, where the 'centre'/'peripheries' relation occurs to be relative, have not ceased taking place till this very day. This debilitation of cultural divisions conceals however a danger of chaos and uniformisation at the same time. This triggers more questions on cultural identity as a guarantee of subjective existence. A post-colonial perspective renders the 'I vs. the Other' relation a crucial one, making it the only option to self-determine. Literary text thus plays the role of not only extending a cultural identity but primarily, of making present the ego's individual limits in comparative processes. As applied to Polish literature, such approach can lead to a new balance being struck between a 'centre' and a 'periphery', owing to interactive actions.
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