Olga Tokarczuk Research Articles

Kultura uczestnictwa w mediach społecznościowych (na przykładzie picturebooka „Pan Wyrazisty” Olgi Tokarczuk i Joanny Concejo). Refleksje dydaktyczne

The article is devoted to the culture of participation in social media and the issue of creating an image on the Internet, using the example of the picturebook Mr. Expressive by Olga Tokarczuk and Joanna Concejo. Due to the fact that the writer and illustrator took up topics relevant to the net generation, such as consumerism, addiction to digital media, narcissism, loneliness, lack of acceptance and understanding of different attitudes, the word-and-graphic story of contemporary culture was subjected to didactic reflection (as a proposal for reading in Polish language classes).

Okruchy egzystencji na płótnie i na papierze. O spotkaniach z trzema obrazami Caravaggia oraz innych polonistycznych inspiracjach

The article reflects on the essence of contemporary humanities in the educational dimension and emphasizes the importance of multidimensional dialogue based on four pillars: relationships, empathy, critical thinking and cultural context. Referring to Olga Tokarczuk’s category of a sensitive narrator, the author of the study postulates the need to educate a sensitive reader and viewer, as well as paying special attention to empathetic education. She presents the topos of homo viator as an anthropological category and in the context of three paintings by Caravaggio: Basket of Fruit, The Burial of Saint Lucy and The Raising of Lazarus, as well as a short story by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz titled The Maidens of Wilko considers various types of journeys that people experience in life, stressing in particular the existential dimension of the human life. The author emphasizes the value of knowing the biographical context in the process of interpreting the proposed cultural texts, as well as proposes specific methodological solutions for working with the discussed cultural texts.

« Vous pouvez entendre les mâchoires de l’arme de l’ange ». Le traducteur humain face à la traduction automatique dans le contexte littéraire : Les Livres de Jakób d’Olga Tokarczuk

The dynamic development of automatic translators raises questions about the future of human translators. The aim of this article is to evaluate the French versions of an excerpt from The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, made by Systran, Google Translate and DeepL, and to compare them with the reference translation made by a human translator. The translations were carried out in 2019 as part of the ATLAS association project ‘L’Observatoire de la traduction automatique’. The analyses show that the inability to interpret the original in a complex way leads to weaknesses in machine translators. This proves that the position of the human translator remains unthreatened in the field of translating high-quality literary texts.

Szczeliny wiejskiego pożądania – queerowa widmowość: wiśnie i mech

This article aims to analyze queer spectrality in rural areas in Zyta Oryszyn’s novel Najada (1970) and in Olga Tokarczuk’s Empuzjon (2022). In both novels, the specters of women who have experienced violence become midwives of queer identities. The haunting does not evoke an affectation of horror, but of solace – it becomes a crack in which the non-heteronormative protagonists experience respite; it is an allied haunting. Referring to the sociological imagination of Avery F. Gordon, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s queer theory and Terry Castle’s concept of the apparitional lesbian, the author distinguishes between two types of queer spectrality. Key-words: queer, rurality, spectrality, hauntology, Zyta Oryszyn, Olga Tokarczuk

The polyphonic principle in the novelistic thinking of Olga Tokarczuk

AbstractThis study explores the influence of the musical principle of polyphony in the novelistic thinking of the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, with a particular focus on the structure of her novel Primeval and Other Times. This principle is manifested in various facets of the novels’ composition, their characters and their themes.In the introductory part of this text, I apply the concept of intermediality to show how the polyphonic principle straddles the boundary-line between music and literature. As in music, also in literature the polyphonic principle is rooted in the principle of plurality: there is no single truth, no single perspective or way of looking at things, and each thought always exists in counterpoint with another thought. This creates a genuine multiplicity of voices each with equal status, which may exist in various relationships with each other (contrast, mirroring, divergence, complementing, etc.), though none of them represents a definitive truth.The main focus in this study is on the novel Primeval and Other Times. When analyzing it, I apply the same approach as could be used for a complex polyphonic structure—specifically, a four-voice fugue with four clearly defined themes: space, time, God, and people. I trace how each of these themes is gradually developed through an elaborate counterpoint: (space: time, space: God, space: people, etc.), and I also set out to present a synthesis—because each voice (theme), despite its independence and equality of status, forms an integral part of the whole, contributing to the text’s meaning-making.

„A Tender Narrator” by Olga Tokarczuk from a Theoretical and Literary Perspective

The article is an attempt at a multi-layered analysis of the category of the „sensitive narrator”, whichOlga Tokarczuk coined in her Nobel speech. This concept has been widely discussed by literarycritics, but it still calls for some kind of synthesis. The article seeks to answer the question whetherthe „sensitive narrator” can be considered a linguistic category or whether this concept shouldbe treated as a metaphor referring to the duties of contemporary literature.

The Nomos of the Water: Indigenous Narrative Identity Claims to Justify Granting Legal Personhood to a River

Abstract This article, anchored in Indigenous narratives, identifies the core arguments for granting juridical personhood to rivers and appointing Indigenous citizens as their legal guardians. The core arguments are as follows: for Indigenous peoples, dwelling on riverbanks is a matter of identity. This identity manifests itself through various interpersonal practices, including language – thus, narratives – and caring. The analysis of sampled narratives has uncovered valid rationales for granting legal personhood to rivers due to identities common for rivers and their dwellers, rivers’ specific capabilities, and their actantial features (rivers can act). Both legal personhood for rivers and Indigenous dwellers being in the role of their legal guardians are unique legal institutions to fulfil the critical interests and capabilities of rivers at a time when these fragile ecosystems are under threat. We illustrate this by using the Amazon and Oder rivers as examples and referring to the Yanomami’s and Olga Tokarczuk’s narrative accounts.

Dusza człowieka we współczesnym świecie. Dwa ujęcia: Wisławy Szymborskiej oraz Olgi Tokarczuk i ich przemieszczenie w przekładzie

The article offers an analysis of the linguistic-cultural concept of dusza/soul present in two literary works by contemporary Polish Nobel-Prize winners, as well as in their translations to English: Wisława Szymborska’s poem Trochę o duszy and Olga Tokarczuk’s story Zgubiona dusza. Their English translations are, respectively: A Few Words on the Soul (trans. Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh) and The Lost Soul (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones). Alternative translation attempts by BA translation students at the University of National Education Commission in Kraków are also discussed. The two texts share the idea that today’s world, with its haste, attention deficit, and consumerism, is not a friendly place for the human soul. In their search for the human soul, both authors prompt similar solutions: a person must return to a small world of their own, or their inner reality, far from fast progress and globalisation. The present analysis takes a cognitive-ethnolinguistic perspective and begins by considering the entity named dusza in Polish and soul in English as cultural-linguistic concepts, tracing the similarities and differences conventionalised in the two languages, and thus the status of those concepts in the respective linguistic worldviews. This leads to an interpretation of Szymborska’s poem and Tokarczuk’s story as non-standard, individual, literary realisations of the standard worldview shared by the community of speakers of Polish. In this context, the English translations can be viewed as records documenting the transfer of the Polish concept of dusza to a new cultural-linguistic location. This approach is grounded in the idea of culture as an iceberg, where individual texts are viewed as expressions of an underlying cultural content.

The Eco-Logic of Olga Tokarczuk’s Prose Worlds Tenderness and Anger as the Pillars of a New Order

In this paper, we offer a reading of selected novels by 2018 Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk in terms of their dedication to changing the world. We show that Tokarczuk’s essays and fiction defy genre limits and invite readers to exercise their imagination in conceptualising the world and redefining values. The alternative modes of viewing reality proposed by Tokarczuk may provide a starting point for change, in which the synergy of ostensibly mutually exclusive tenderness and anger kindles hope in the times of crisis and inspires courage to embrace change and, in doing so, to use the opportune moment (kairos) and institute a new order – one based on justice for the bio-community.

The nonhuman and coming community in the selected works of Olga Tokarczuk

ABSTRACT This paper explores the plight of nonhumans and the form of the coming community through the status quo of border-crossing bodies in selected works by Olga Tokarczuk in light of biopolitics. It highlights the link between dehumanization and biopolitics and argues that the nonhuman becomes a foundation of modern sovereignty. The nonhuman is produced by an inclusive exclusion, where the violence enters in and maintains the sovereign, and this anthropocentric mechanism becomes the fundamental political paradigm. To resist this anthropocentrism, Tokarczuk proposes a new form of community, the ‘airport-republic’ with fluid trans-borders, for opening up a new subject construction model and human organization form for post-Holocaust humanity. However, it is easy for these people who are invisible or becoming nonhuman to fall into the indistinguishable zone between humans and animals, between bios (politically qualified life) and zoē (bare life). They cannot be guaranteed by the sovereignty power, thereby falling back again into the logic of the Holocaust.

Anima(l) Moralia, or Righteous Anger: Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor

Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor ( Pokot, 2017), an adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead (2009), tells the story of an old woman, Janina Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat), who advocates for animal rights and uses every measure to fight the local hunting culture. Due to the centrality of the relationship between human beings and the world of nature, Holland’s film refers to the recent debates aimed at de-centralizing the human subject. This article will argue, however, that despite its attempt to alter the human–animal relationship, Spoor conveys anthropocentric perspectives and as such it does not participate in the “non-human turn.” Instead, the film can be linked to the “emotional turn” taking precedence in the humanities during the last two decades, in that it expresses the director’s affective response to the political realities of contemporary Poland, especially its unshaken patriarchal power, which subordinates the social margins.

‘All Day, All Night the Body Intervenes’: Representation of Friday in Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, Foe by J. M. Coetzee and ‘Wyspa’ by Olga Tokarczuk

This article explores representations of Friday in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), J.M Coetzee’s novel Foe (1986) and Olga Tokarczuk’s short story ‘Wyspa’ [‘The Island’] (2001). In all three works, Friday is mediated and filtered by the process of narration. This article demonstrates how the narrator(s)’s understanding of corporeality affects the representation of the companion, from a source of useful manpower to a silent reservoir of stories, to a trigger which necessitates crossing gender boundaries. Friday’s corporeality reflects the contemporary philosophical understanding of the relation between body and mind, debates around the status of the colonial body, and, more recently, human relations to the environment around us, in tune with new materialist sensibilities.

“Ma semblable, ma soeur”: Negative Capability and Self-Fashioning in “The Quilt Maker” by Angela Carter and Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

ABSTRACT Reading fiction by Angela Carter and Olga Tokarczuk side by side is a fascinating but eerie experience: the celebrated British fabulist and the Nobel-winning Polish writer-cum-public intellectual share some indefinable quality – their oeuvres resonate. My aim in this paper is to add to the critical debate on self-fashioning in Carter and Tokarczuk by comparing how they script their lives as reflected in their fiction. The following discussion of Carter’s short story “The Quilt Maker” and Tokarczuk’s Flights points to how they portray the ambiguities involved in being a female writer. Both writers emphasize the extreme subjectivity of their projects, both script their lives as reflected in their fiction, both create their literary personas with allusions to their real biographies, and both make these personas create constellations and patchworks of narrative fragments employing negative capability to suggest – rather than – tell stories.

On the Writing of Natural Imagery in "House by Day, House by Night"

Olga Tokarczuk is a well-known female writer in Poland, whose works often reflect the deep meaning of reality through the description of daily things, and "House by Day, House by Night" is her masterpiece. The imagery in the work involves the grand natural world, from the cosmic celestial bodies to the earthly creatures. By observing celestial bodies, Tokarczuk uses the sun and moon to hint at the change of day and night and the laws of change and immutability in the universe, and uses comets as metaphors for natural and man-made disasters. By focusing on the earth, Tokarczuk uses forests as a sanctuary for natural life, using the dual perspective of the valley to demonstrate the close relationship between nature and people. Through dialogue with living beings, Tokarczuk reflects the laws of nature through the words and deeds of the old woman Marta, and alludes to the national character of Poland through mushroomism.

Olga Tokarczuk’s Exhibition of Janina Duszejko as an Eco Crusader

Olga Tokarczuk, in her novel Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, meticulously pilots an ecological perspective, inviting readers to witness the world through this lens, and vividly presenting Janina Duszejko as a crusader for ecology. The narrative discloses the protagonist Janina emerging as a fervent advocate for nature, articulating a profound connection with the land and animals, championing a harmonious coexistence between humanity and the natural world. Simultaneously, Tokarczuk sheds light on the ruthless exploitation of nature by mankind, addressing issues like hunting and deforestation. This paper intricately untangles the protagonist’s responses to ecological injustices, providing a nuanced exploration of the delicate balance between human actions and the environment. This research researches into Tokarczuk’s thematic depth and her noteworthy contribution to the discourse on environmental consciousness in literature. With an astute portrayal of Janina as an Eco Crusader, the author not only captures the fragility of the ecological landscape but also enriches the broader narrative on humanity’s interconnectedness with the environment.

A Tender Witness’s Story of War: A Tale on the Road in Three Voices

On February 24, 2022, we embarked on a war journey into the unknown, witnessing the war in Ukraine. Our contact with the war is mediated (mainly by the media), yet painful and saturated with extreme emotions. This article is an autoethnographic description of the experiences of this journey of three academics from Poland, a frontline country. The metaphor of the road is carried out by evocative autoethnography in terms of its symbolism of personal journey of each of us; nevertheless, it also unifies our experiences of war into one tender narrative. Embedded in the essence of our autoethnographic narrative of the war is a constant openness to new circumstances, the natural dynamics of action at the front and in the frontier country, and the constant search for and discovery of one’s own narrative identity. Each part of this path traveled is inscribed in the baggage of personal experience, a narrative of life in a frontier country, unification by the situation of witnessing the war, and the desire to express our resistance to it. It became a form of mental resistance, analysis, empathy, and concern which were our methods of struggle and a way of taking responsibility for the reality we witness. In the description, we used the “tender narrative” proposed in the texts of Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk.

Inside the Labyrinth. The Post-Communist Novel Between Anti-Communism and Nostalgia

ABSTRACT The article tries to map the perspectives of the post-communist East on its own communist past, as envisioned by four writers and their relevant novels: the Michal Ajvaz (The Other City, 1993), Mircea Cărtărescu (Blinding, 1996), the David Albahari (Leeches, 2006), the Olga Tokarczuk (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, 2009). I argue that these novels – which take the form of mysteries and/or draw on conspiracy theories – resort to specific genre tropes in their attempt to render in an allegorical code the deficits in the cognitive mapping of the post-communist period. This blank spot concerns the project of post-communism as an evasive totality which the East has been constantly trying to grasp, after being confined in the cognitive labyrinth of the neoliberal capitalism that has predominated since the demise of communism in central Europe in 1989. My study relies on Fredric Jameson’s view that conspiracy theories are indicative of deficiencies of cognitive mappings. Subsequently, I analyse the four novels in a World Literature frame. These terms help in interpreting the ways in which the literatures of the former Eastern Bloc relate to their own past, but also to the new planetary conscience pushed forward by neoliberal capitalism.

The nomadic principle in the novel “Flights” by Olga Tokarczuk

The article deals with the novel “Flights” by Olga Tokarczuk, Polish writer, awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, in the context of nomadological theory of postmodernism. The article’s theoretical basis draws from poststructuralist studies by J. Deleuze and F. Guattari. Their work proposes a new approach to the concept of modern human existence, introducing the concepts of “nomad” and “rhizome”. The analysis of Tokarchuk’s novel “Flights” reveals its nomadological basis, which is determined by the compositional principles of decentralisation, dynamism, and variation of the artistic form and content of the text. The conceptual foundations of both the novel “Flights” and Tokarczuk’s entire literary work are set out in her book “Czuły narrator”, in which she argues for the introduction of a new type of narrator into prose – the fourth-person narrator, who is able to incorporate the point of view of each character, to see more and further, and to exist outside of time. The “Flights” contains allusions to Russian culture, specifically to the worldview of the “runners” (beguny) (or “wanderers”), Old Believers who believed that movement was the only way to salvation. The existential status of the novel’s characters is determined by the fluid nature of personality and explained by the narrator’s statement of the instability of human identity. The artistic specificity of not only the analysed novel but also of Tokarchuk’s entire oeuvre is determined by themes such as migration, escape from traditions and stereotypes, the psychological and social aspects of the nomadic way of life.

Translator’s Notes in a Russian Translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s Bieguni Novel

The article addresses the issue of translator’s notes in a Russian translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s “Bieguni” novel by Irina Adelʹgejm. The main text of the original, despite its abundance in borrowings, interjections and quotations in languages other than Polish, was not provided with explanatory notes by the author. The translator, however, provided the translation with 149 notes. They are notesexplaining terms, proper names, names of realities and others translated in the main text as well as notes explaining fragments formulated in the novel’s text in languages other than the language of the narration. On the basis of the undertaken analysis it is stated that the strategy of forming paratexts adopted by the translator is inconsistent. The secondary text designates an additional way of reading “Bieguni” novel, but it does not impose it as using the notes is just a possibility and depends on the reader’s choice.

Transgression and tenderness. Olga Tokarczuk in Comparative Perspective

The article is a review of the recently published by Routledge anthology Olga Tokarczuk. Comparative Perspectives, edited by Lidia Wisniewska and Jakub Lipski. As the first alngo-language monograph on Tokarczuk, supported by a concrete methodological proposal, it finds a significant place in the international discourse of the author. In the Polish literary discourse, which has been divided, it also opens new interpretative paths. The authors of the anthology, passing the boundaries of traditional comparative literature, highlight the epistemological aspect of Tokarczuk’s work, the way of understanding the “bizarness”, as well as the sources of her aesthetics. It turns out that the social dimension of Tokarczuk's prose, also gains a personal character, and the tender narrator, moving along the comparative path, has a chance to break out of abstraction towards subjectivity.