Miasto jako przestrzeń autorskiej autokreacji w prozie niemieckiej i polskiej po 1989 roku

• Authors: Bożena Chołuj

Title variants

EN

The City as a Space for the Author’s Self-creation in German and Polish Prose after 1989

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

This article analyses prose texts by Inga Iwasiow, Vladimir Kaminer and Tina Strohecker, in which the representation of cities is essential. The authors do not aestheticise nor organise the city, it is the city that organises the texts and the narration. – Reference to Variationen der Erzahlformen im gegenwartigen Wandel der literarischen Gattungen by Zoran Konstantinovic – who perceives a story as an anthropological category, as a human need for self-expression – facilitates the comprehension of these texts for the “I” in the narration is self-created as it talks about the city in each of the texts. Since the literary characters are created in the likeness of the authors themselves, they represent the author’s feeling of isolation and alienation. The analysis shows that it is the first-person narration with dominant self-viewpoint which determines – to a considerable extent – the self-creation in the space and through the space of the cities described. Each time, the narration is so coherent with the city presented that, along with it and through it the narration starts to live its own life in the text. When we analyse some earlier texts, such as Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) by Alfred Doblin, which is one of the most prominent novels about the city, not only a polyphonic character of Berlin may be seen, but also a polyphonic character of the whole work, which depicts Franz Biberkopf, a creation of pre-war Berlin. In the case of contemporary works presented in the article, it is not polyphony that is mostly important, but fragmentation. However, not fragmentation in relation to a work or a character – such was an example of Doblin – but in relation to the self-creation of an author.

Keywords

EN

Comparative literature; German and Polish prose after 1989 City in literature; Author’s self-creation

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego
• Journal: Rocznik Komparatystyczny
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 2
• Pages: p. 27-42

Contributors

author

Bożena Chołuj

• Uniwersytet Warszawski, Wydział Neofilologii, Instytut Germanistyki, ul. Dobra 55, 00-312 Warszawa