Olga Tokarczuk Research Articles

WILLIAM BLAKE'S CREATIVITY AS A DEFINING FEATURE OF THE NOVEL "DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD" BY OLGA TOKARCZUK

In this paper we describe the peculiarities of William Blake's intertext in the novel "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" by Olga Tokarczuk. It is determined that the title of the novel and the epigraphs for each of its chapters are quotes from B

Книгоцентрическая картина мира в романах О. Токарчук «Путешествие людей Книги» и «Книги Якова»

The authors have conducted a comparative analysis of the novels by Olga Tokarczuk, "The Journey of the People of the Book" and "The Books of Jacob,", where the conceptual role is played by motifs of travel and books, and the theme of religious-mystical societies of the 17th-18th centuries becomes significant. The genre specificity of the two texts, features of their narrative structure, and character systems are considered. It is asserted that the two analyzed books share a logocentric and book-centric worldview, the meaning of which lies in the belief in the ability of humans to influence reality through words and books. In connection with the dialectic of word and deed, Faustian motifs of both texts are revealed. In "The Jour­ney of the People of the Book" and "The Books of Jacob," there is also an important opposition of feminine and masculine in the ideological-artistic structure of the novels. Connected with this is the polocentric aspect of "The Books of Jacob," where the issues of Polish messianism are raised, and the archetype of the Virgin, acquiring national color through a uniquely inter­preted myth of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, finds expression. In connection with the cult of the Virgin, the issue of the influence on Tokarczuk's artistic imagination of Jung's idea of quaternity as an archetypal numerical expression of the absolute is also noted.

Śmierć mitów czy kryzys wyobraźni? „Myślenie mityczne” a fantazmaty ponowoczesności oraz kilka uwag do tekstów Olgi Tokarczuk

Śmierć mitów czy kryzys wyobraźni? „Myślenie mityczne” a fantazmaty ponowoczesności oraz kilka uwag do tekstów Olgi Tokarczuk

“Man is Soul, Body, and Narrator”: Olga Tokarczuk’s Narrative Strategy

The article is devoted to the prose of Olga Tokarczuk, one of the greatest Polish writers of the turn of the twenty-first century. The most important constant of Tokarczuk’s worldview is the category of corporeality/materiality. The logic of corporeality/materiality on different levels determines the organization of texts, generates connections across motives and a common semantic field. The narrative of corporeality/materiality, leveraged by means of the writer’s frequent use of empathetic narrative, acts as a special construct by means of which Tokarczuk explores the reality of the surrounding world, but also communicates with it (through the potential recipient of the text). The article analyses the specificity of Tokarczuk’s visualisation of body practices in her prose (representations of the body, interaction of bodies, interaction of the body with the environment) and significant elements of the narrative structure directly connected with corporeality/materiality: the system of characters, the specificity of comparisons, basic ideas, the role of boundaries as an aesthetic and ethical category, as well as an artistic tool, and the moral purpose of the narrative.

Pejzaże umierania i żałoby w polskiej literaturze ostatnich dekad

This article concerns the representations of loss and mourning in the recent Polish literature from the perspective of spacial turn. The author analyzes three literary works: Zapiski z nocnych dyżurów [Notes from night duty] by Jacek Baczak, Ostatnie historie [Recent stories] by Olga Tokarczuk and Sorge by Aleksandra Zielińska. The article seeks to demonstrate how such categories as affective heterotopia, emotive topography, affective geography and performativity of place can be useful to study the literary landscapes of dying, mourning and loss. The remarks aim to emphasize spatial, not only temporal, aspect of the experience of death.

Do czego literaturze regionalnej potrzebne jest imaginarium grozy? O gotycyzowaniu Dolnego Śląska

Why Does Regional Literature Need an Imaginarium of Horror? On Gothicizing Lower Silesia The article focuses on the relationship between gothicism and regionalism in the literature of Lower Silesia. The author poses a question about the role of the imaginarium of horror in shaping the psychotopography of the region, in which real, spectral and affective topographies converge. An important context is the peripheralization of the region after the political transformation, which resulted in economic regression of Lower Silesia. Gothic regionalism is therefore interpreted as a reaction to social, economic and political processes taking place on a local and global scale, but perceived from a peripheral point of view. As a descriptive term, however, it allows to recognize several aspects: the key role of center-periphery relations, local-global interactions, the influence of late capitalism, the return of repressed events as the uncanny, the horror of everyday life and the exclusion of what exceeds the internal normativity of regional communities. Works of selected authors were analysed, e.g. Joanna Bator, Olga Tokarczuk, Henryk Waniek, Jakub Bielawski, Maciej Bobula.

„Wewnątrz siebie samej”. Praktyka twórcza Olgi Tokarczuk w świetle opowiadania Szkocki miesiąc z tomu Gra na wielu bębenkach

“Inside Yourself ” Creative Practice of Olga Tokarczuk in the Context of Short Story Scottish Month from the Volume Playing on a Multitude of Drums The article is concerned with one of the most important aspects of Olga Tokarczuk’s oeuvre, which is the topic of writing practice. The Noble Prize winner addresses it not only in her essays, but also in her opinion pieces, showcasing through it the constant and cautious observation of her own creative process. The reflexion on the relation between literature and reality is also presented in the literary texts, to which amongst others belongs the short story Scottish Month from the volume Playing on a Multitude of Drums. The text interpretation presented in the article addresses the question of situating the creative act at the crossroads of what is real and what is imagined, being connected – as a consequence – with perceiving the writer as a person who simultaneously writes and is written. The epitome of this meta-literary multiplication is the main protagonist – the character, narrator and alter ego of the author at the same time, who becomes aware of her involvement with the multilayered structure of truth and fiction.

“A Relative, Really; Disturbingly Similar”: Nonhuman Animals in the Works of Olga Tokarczuk

“A Relative, Really; Disturbingly Similar”: Nonhuman Animals in the Works of Olga Tokarczuk

Problemy tożsamości płciowej i androgynii oraz ich rozumienie w dyskursie ponowoczesności na podstawie wybranych przykładów polskiej prozy po roku 1989

The essay is an attempt to sketch a panorama of representations of the body, corporeality and their relation to gender identity in prose written after 1989, a caesura of particular significance for corporeality. The text discusses literary images of gender identity on the basis of available studies that show the state of research in this field. The essay refers to the concept of the androgynous myth and also refers to the theories of the ‘opaque body’ and the ‘unwanted body’. The problematics contained in the text refer to the works of Olga Tokarczuk, Natasza Goerke, Izabela Filipiak and Andrzej Czcibor-Piotrowski, among others, which deal with the body-related gender identity. The study does not consider works that contain literary representations of gender identity that function in isolation from the body, but focuses on those that are central to the issues of corporeality. This stems from the assumption of the importance of the bodily experience in a literary work that should not only refer to the body, but also touch on the essence of humanity.

Dziewczyńska postpamięć natury. „Ostatnie drzewo na Ziemi” Małgorzaty Kur

The article is an attempt to read Małgorzata Kur’s The Last Tree on The Earth in the context of the climate crisis and eco-feminism. The researcher writes the story of a girl taking care of the only tree in the world, not only in the trend of engaged literature, but also in the cited book; she also notices new trends emerging in education and pedagogy. Małgorzata Kur’s book is therefore an ecological story directing readers’ attention to the relations between people and non-people, but also a text about shaping an empathetic attitude among the young generation, which paradoxically consists of both a sense of fragility and agency. It is thanks to them that the kairotic moment mentioned by the researcher after Olga Tokarczuk can be considered as a chance to change the world.

Egzystencjalne spojrzenie na „Opowiadania Muminków”. Filozoficzny komentarz do „Muminków. Droga do dojrzałości” Olgi Tokarczuk

The article is a philosophical commentary on Olga Tokarczuk’s therapy program Moomins: Road to Maturity . The main goal of the article is to show the existential background of Moomin Stories , and thus go beyond the interpretation proposed by the Nobel Prize winner in the perspective of depth psychology. The article emphasizes the adoption of a different attitude towards Tokarczuk’s reading of Moomins , which is reductionist and deterministic. Meanwhile, the existential interpretation allows for a critical discussion of the assumptions adopted in the psychological and developmental reading of the Nobel Prize winner.

„Próba generalna” współ-odczuwania z nie-ludźmi w opowiadaniu Olgi Tokarczuk

The work reflects Olga Tokarczuk’s short story Dress Rehearsal which deals with the topic of apocalypse, climatic catastrophe, and climate change. The article is a part of a scientific work, which is a master’s thesis dealing with the complex issue of the subjectivity of animals and nature, as well as the common environment and post-environment, and the study of the relationship between humans and non-humans. In the work, the Nobel Prize winner comes under the influence of a ‘world-creator’ and an ‘intense observer’, thus human relations can be complicated in times of the end of the world and how human attitudes towards animals and the world change. This time of the end, marked by Giorgio Agamben with the messianic era, allows for a certain non-action towards reality, and empathy and compassion begin being a remedy for centuries of objectification of other beings.

Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights as an example of genre transformation in the contemporary novel – a linguistic and literary view

Drawing from both German and Polish linguistic and literary perspectives, the article attempts to examine genre changes within the genre pattern of the novel and decide whether Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights, described by the author herself as a novel, should be attributed to this genre. We assume that linguistic and literary tools will allow us to determine the most characteristic features of contemporary novel productions to decide on the nature of changes taking place within the studied genre. Looking at Tokarczuk’s work not through the prism of a single genre but, following Maria Wojtak, Kirsten Adamzik or Ulla Fix, from the perspective of inter-genre relations, allows not only to conclude that the analyzed material is located on the fringes of the genre pattern of the novel but also to see other inter-textual dependencies and consider the text under study as a genre in the form of a collection.

Books Briefly

Books Briefly

In Pursuit of Storytelling: A Conversation with Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Laureate in Literature

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Writing Differently about Scholarly Issues: Defending Our Voices and Inviting the Reader

Abstract This paper addresses an ethical issue which comes into play when a scholar sits down to write an article. It concerns rhetorical strategies traditionally employed in top-tier academic journals, specifically in business and management, which efface a unique authorial voice and are reader exclusive. To reclaim authorial voice and embrace the reader’s presence in text construction, we propose approaching scholarly writing as a dialogue between the writer and the reader, an emotional engagement which includes aspects of the notion of ‘tenderness’ coined by Olga Tokarczuk (2019, 2020). Writing with tenderness enables authors to engage with readers in a way that helps them unite fragments of text into a single coherent design. Because in our digitalised and globalised world, there is a lack of universal values the writer could draw on to craft arguments convincing for the reader, we need to search for new ways to narrate our lives. Our approach involves the inclusion of what Tokarczuk (2019) calls ‘structures of mythology’ which are conceived of as values fundamental for human lives and allow for a wide range of content-dependent interpretations. Incorporating aspects of ‘tenderness’ in the process of text production will have important impact on the utility, accessibility, relevance, quality and global reach of scholarly writing.

‘Tender Narrator’ Who Sees Beyond Time:

While trauma occurs in separation, healing happens in relation, where the inner dynamics of voice and expression play an important role in narrating a traumatic experience. In her acceptance speech for the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, novelist Olga Tokarczuk envisioned a new form of a literary narrator, one who sees beyond a singular point of view to include the interrelatedness of the world and the interdependence of all beings. In this article, we present a framework for the integration of individual and collective trauma that is focused on creating safe, interactive group spaces for dialogue, group coherence building, reflection, and transformative practices. We illustrate the foundational role of narrative as part of this integration process in groups and programs led by the article’s co-author, teacher and international facilitator Thomas Hübl. We examine the stages of the narrative process in trauma integration, observing the potential shifts in points of view to listen for the voice of what Tokarczuk refers to as the “tender narrator”.We review the literature on trauma and collective trauma, and identify its impacts, especially its ubiquitous nature as part of every society’s social milieu. We also read part of a transcript of a dialogue focused on intergenerational and historical trauma, inviting us, as authors and readers, to participate in a practice of embodied witnessing. In presenting this framework, our intention as collaborators is to underline the urgency for healing individual and collective trauma through engaging in novel pathways of group experiential learning and integration.

Introduction: Form and Medium

Introduction: Form and Medium

Co zyskujemy żyjąc pomiędzy? Czułość według Olgi Tokarczuk w przekładzie na inne języki

Ethnolinguistic inquiry makes ample use of insights proposed in translation studies: one of them is to consider the original and its translations as a coherent body of texts. However, if in most cases the original–translation relationship is viewed in terms of the inevitable loss that occurs in the process, this study proposes to search for semantic gains in the original–translation configuration, in the sense that the translation complements or develops the original. Three categories of such gain are proposed: (1) extension of the original’s semantics (which is effected through profiling as a parameter of cognitive salience), (2) retrieval of the multiple viewpoints present in the original, and (3) enhancement of the original’s meaning (effected through the “loudness” of the speaking “voice”). The three categories of gain are illustrated here with the various ways in which the concept of tenderness is profiled in the English, French, Portuguese, and Russian translations of Olga Tokarczuk’s Nobel lecture.

Olga Tokarczuk’s prose as a challenge for the translator: notes on the margins of the Ukrainian translation of the novel The Books of Jacob

Olga Tokarczuk’s novel The Books of Jacob is a wide and complicated epic panorama the action of which takes place on the borderlands of countries, cultures, and religions. Translating such a work into any language is a task that requires a lot of effort and careful preparation, aimed first of all at exploring all possible contexts: historical, linguistic, religious. A particularly difficult challenge is to translate The Books of Jacob into one of the languages that are part of the reality presented in the novel and are in relationships of interference with other languages used by the characters or functioning in their environments. Ukrainian is such a language. This article is an attempt to summarise the experience of translating the novel into this language, taking into account the greatest difficulties faced by the translator.