Obrazki z miasteczka w świetle problemu (z) mimesis : o "Pelargoniach" Zofii Mitosek

Abstract

The subject of analysis in the present study constitutes an autobiographical book Pelargonie by Zofia Mitosek, a literary theorist dealing with, inter alia, the problem of mimesis. In this novel, memories of childhood in a small town were portrayed by presenting the events in the present tense from the point of view of a young child. Yet the relationship between the author and the narrator turns out to be complex, while the simplicity of verbal expressions only feigns the transparency of language in which the reality is to reflect. The understanding of the functions of the narrative strategies employed in Pelargonie is rendered by their investigation in the context of research conceptions of Mitosek. The aim of the article is to demonstrate what constitutes the gist of the book as concerns the subject of the identity of an individual, the specificity of the home town of the author, the post‑war socio‑political situation, as well as the (re)construction potentiality of literature. The latter may represent the past exclusively by means of fragments, traces, or the configuration of “pictures”, being as much the shards of the mirror of reality as the signs of cultural and narrational codes and the innumerable earlier stories.