Isabelle Vonlanthen
Back to Paradise. The search for small homelands in contemporary Swiss literature
Translated from German by Agnieszka Gadzala
In the last decade, the word "Heimatroman" (a tale of the native province) has returned to Swiss literature and its interpreters. At the same time, there has been a revival of the Swiss dialect (Schweizerdeutsch), which until now was claimed to be underrepresented in Swiss German literature. The author presents two examples of such tales, Vrenelis Gärtli by Tim Krohn and Aufgrochsen by Roland Reichen. Both writers place the action of their books in a remote native province, both integrate dialect elements as an important part of their narration – achieving these in a very different style and by different means. Whilst Krohn is creating an anti-stereotypical alpine refugium on a thick layer of ancient yet modern sagas and legends, using a rich dialectically imprinted original language, Reichen presents a remote village scenery, scarce in action and emotion, using a language where the dialect stands for the inability to express one's feeling, for their overall absence.

The interpretation of this "Heimatroman"-phenomenon is twofold – critics and readers differ whether this return to the native province, although in a postmodern and critical way, is an original way of focusing on existential problems by examining them in a small, hermetically closed world, or just a retreat to producing "ethno-kitsch" and therefore voluntarily hiding in a small corner of German literature. Also, the use of dialect is seen in two ways – as a way of creating a national, authentic yet open literature vs. a mannerism which doesn't arise from inner necessity. The presented works of Krohn and Reichen are proof of the originality of such an approach and the productiveness of dialect in literary language.

Tomasz Kunz
Actual-textual-social. The need for a different literary sociology
This article is an attempt to sketch a new direction for the development of culturally oriented literary sociology, which, being aware of its cognitive shortcomings and withdrawing its scientific claims, would agree to lose its privileged status with regard to literature and art. By consciously using the language of literature and art, it would become a special fiction of a higher order and a specific style of perception and description of socially and historically sanctioned methods of textual functioning in a dynamic and variable communication sphere. In such a sphere literature loses its superior position for the benefit of new media of political and cultural communication, and especially new media connected with the informational revolution.

Such literary sociology, which accepts the linguistic status of reality created by culturally determined social discursive practices and recognizes literary texts as a derivative of a particular type of works, could speak on languages of description, ideologies, world views, and perspectives of literature already read by someone and plugged into a larger, polyphonic cultural communication, one that would be subject to exchange, negotiation and constant decontextualization.

Its role would encompass, among other things, a redefinition of our way of perceiving the co-relation between the reality and forms of its visual and linguistic manifestation, especially, the co-relation between what's actual and what's textual or social.

Wojciech Rusinek
Esthetics and decomposition – the world as described in Michal Witkowski's fiction
Using the construction of the world described in the works as a prism, the article attempts to interpret the fiction of Michal Witkowski. Wojciech Rusinek proposes that it is precisely on the level of narration where one can notice a cohesive project at the basis of the literary work discussed here. But that is not all – one can also point out the modifications to this project. And so, in the first chapter of the essay, the analysis begins with the problematic setting of nostalgic and initiation conventions in the novels and short stories of the author of Lubiewo.

We are shown a parody of transformation of such narrative models, proving their conventionality and mimetic incapacity, as well as the entanglement in "textual" consciousness of literature dealing with nostalgic depictions. In addition, it is worth noting that such parody-charged narration patterns retain certain mood-evoking powers by employing the already fixed perception codes with respect to the world presented in the works.

In chapter two, Rusinek poses the question whether in Witkowski's fiction an explanation appears as to the origins of this approach to his literary material, which emphasizes its artificiality, predictability and conventional incapacity, plus – on the side of content – a hindered state of events being described. This explanation is used to present the picture of the 1980s as a time of general instability of social principles and ontology of reality, as it seems to appear from the discussed novels and short stories. When talking about subsequent works, Rusinek notices that a consequence of this "soft" approach to historical and material reality is also a relaxation of sexual identity, and an aesthetic narration formula.

The final chapter brings yet another reflection about the world presented in Witkowski's fiction, and more specifically – the question whether the works can be read according to the modernistic scale (assuming even at least minimal mimetics) or if they should be considered as a postmodernistic paradigm (treating the mimetic relation only as an element of textual strategy.) Rusinek shows a dynamic approach to this problem in Witkowski's works. As such, it makes it more difficult, if not impossible, to offer an unequivocal answer whether the works in question truly belong to one of the grand literary formations.

Krzysztof Unilowski
Farewell to the People's Republic? On stories by Józef Lozinski and Michal Witkowski
Krzysztof Unilowski compares two novels – Apogeum (1982) by Józef Lozinski and Michal Witkowski's Barbara Radziwillówna z Jaworzna-Szczakowej (2007). The two pieces are connected by similarities of poetics and style – in both cases we deal with a story told by a main character-narrator in which many types of language result in an interesting hybrid. In addition, both works complement each other with respect to problematic issues. In Lozinski's novel the turn of the 1970s in Poland is presented as a state of degradation of the Promethean revolutionary idea, and with it – modernity. Its main characters are educated plebeians, young thinkers who can't find themselves in any language. As a consequence – their speech becomes autonomic and begins to imitate a caricatured version of literary expression.

For his main character Michal Witkowski chose a plebeian who talks about his semi-legal business dealings in the time of political changes. Though he uses a language consisting of a mishmash of various styles and ideologies – unlike Lozinski's protagonist – he doesn't long for the truth, but in order to escape both regimes – post-socialism and late capitalism, he practices stylistic mimicry. Witkowski's novel appears as an apologia of vagueness, identity games and communication plays affirming everything that from Lozinski's perspective seemed but an apocalypse of modernity.

Mikolaj Marcela
Who is the narrator? Is the narrator dead? On Michal Witkowski's Barbara Radziwillówna z Jaworzna-Szczakowej
To paraphrase the title of one of Michel Foucault's most significant essays, Mikolaj Marcela suggests that the most interesting question with respect to Michal Witkowski's Barbara Radziwillówna z Jaworzna-Szczakowej is about its narrator. We can't even say that Hubert, who narrates the novel, is an unbelievable narrator. Rather, as Witkowski himself would like us to believe, he is a "destroyer of discourses", resembling from one angle Józio from Ferdydurke, locked up in a prison of ready-made social "gobs", and from the other angle – the Shakespearean Falstaff, an open denouncer of discourse.

It's not without relevance that Hubert comes from Jaworzna-Szczakowej, located in the western part of Poland, which has not had its own literary tradition and which in this regard was overrun by the conventions streaming in from the east of the Vistula river. This is possibly where Hubert's mystery lies: he is torn between the language of eastern literary romanticism, and mass media images of pop culture. Witkowski's novel touches on one of the most important problems of modern literature – the issue of subjectivity. From this perspective Barbara Radziwillówna poses additional questions for us – whether authenticity is at all possible, or if it is just a momentary flash from behind a mass of falseness.

Published 2009-01-31