Schulz and imaginative spaces by Eliza Kącka / Polish Literary Culture Series: Digital Lectures Part I

Abstract:

One of the distinctive features of modernity turned out to be that the (seemingly) obvious relations between space and time in prose began to be subject to numerous mutations, and these mutations to a theorizing view. In connection with the first modernist literature evaluations - at the end of the nineteenth century - the dynamics of the time-space relationship were studied more carefully, treating them as a separate material for reflection. In addition, a whole branch of reflection dealing with space emerged. Combining research on the work of the imagination with historical-topographical correctness, it allowed for many productive readings of the works of Marcel Proust and James Joyce. In Polish literature, the theoretical and written "spatial" revolution was relatively delayed but achieved more radical effects.

An illustration of one of the uncompromising, revolutionary and rebellious writing solutions is the prose of Bruno Schulz, who subordinated his work to the laws of the imagination. This does not mean that his world came out of thin air. It is easy to notice that the author of “Cinnamon Shops”, while designing his half-oneiric topographies, also points to a specific town. Nevertheless, it is the town as it was perceived by a child, and this child's perception/consciousness is attempted to be reconstructed by the author, who is committing a regress to childhood. Schulz creates mythologies of memories, which in his case has nothing to do with sentimental expeditions. Walking into his world, we enter a reality subject to the law of connotation.
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Eliza Kącka is an assistant professor at the Contemporary Literary and Artistic Culture Unit PUNO and literary scholar associated with the Faculty of Polish Studies at the University of Warsaw. She graduated from the Polish Philology Department at the Nicolaus Copernicus University and Academia Artes Liberales. In 2014 she completed her PhD program in cultural studies at the Institute of Polish Literature (University of Warsaw) and received her PhD in 2015. The subject of her dissertation was: Reading as an encounter. Stanisław Brzozowski’s readings of Cyprian Norwid, Giambattista Vico, and John Henry Newman. She published a monograph on Cyprian Norwid and Stanisław Brzozowski. Her major fields of interest are: philosophical anthropology, hermeneutics, modernism in literature, and contemporary Polish poetry.

Contemporary Literary and Artistic Culture Unit of the Institute of European Culture at the Polish University Abroad in London has the pleasure to invite you to a series of digital sessions. As part of this series, our Lecturers will talk about Polish literature and introduce us to issues of interest to them in the field of analysis of literary work, comparatistics and anthropology of literature.
➤ We will start with a lecture by Dr. Eliza Kącka in the formula of open access.
➤ For whom: We especially invite all those who are interested in learning the Polish language and culture, as well as ways of unconventional thinking and talking about literature.
➤ Link to the transmission: https://youtu.be/rB_lsSZ230w
➤The lectures will be held in Polish.
➤Coordinator of the Series: Justyna Gorzkowicz