Przestrzeń miejska i przełom. "Czytadło" Tadeusza Konwickiego i "Aż do trzewi" Christy Wolf

Abstract

The article deals with the creation of the urban area of East Berlin and Warsaw in the light of the political breakthrough during the years of 1989-1990. The selection of Tadeusz Konwicki’s works entitled “Czytadło” and Christa Wolf’s “AŜ do trzewi” stems from a similar narrative situation (the characters’ journeys through the changing sceneries of the capitals, similar narrative strategies) which is a monologue said in the form of “boring into” the layers of the speaker’s memory and similarly perceived account taking – by means of bestowing symbolical value to fragments of the city. The Warsaw sceneries do not resemble the East Berlin ones. Insofar as it is seen in the eyes of the narrator of “Czytadło” the Polish capital becomes a place of easternwestern colonization in the transformation times. Yet, Berlin in Wolf’s short story is a dead city, existing only in the realm of dream and memory. Wolf’s short story utilizes the body-world metaphor to show that the healing process of the narrator is connected with revealing other levels of the history of East Berlin.