Empty places in space, empty places in language. Around the Place of Andrzej Stasiuk and two short stories by Zygmunt Haupt

Abstract

The subject of interest of the authors of an article are literary transformations of the places of south-eastern Poland in the interwar period (in two stories by Zygmunt Haupt) and from the systemic breakthrough at the end of the 20th century (one of the „Galician stories” by Andrzej Stasiuk). The starting point was two didactic experiences with the work of the latter writer. Both writers evoke in their works the phenomenon of empty places, stripped as a result of historical turmoil, but also spent on the action of „blind” nature. In the course of the analysis (using the methodology of cultural geography and geopoetics), linguistic attempts to grasp the texture of places and the problems of time resulting from the experience of a specific space were studied. An important part of the stories discussed is the element of imagination work, with the help of which artists try to fill the territories affected by emptiness. Yet another important issue is the availability of space in relation to the subject placed in it.