Językiem miłości, językiem ciała... Djuna Barnes i Wiek 21 Ewy Kuryluk
The body of language, the body of love. Djuna Barnes and Ewa Kuryluk’s novel Century 21

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the influence of the avant-garde prose of American writer Djuna Barnes on the work of contemporary Polish artist Ewa Kuryluk, directing particular attention to the intertextual play between the novels Nightwood (Barnes) and Century 21 (Kuryluk). Barnes’ writing, which is, to put it after Julie Taylor, a representation of “affective modernism,” a style of emotion behind the experienced and experiencing body, becomes for Kuryluk one of the main sources of portraying trauma and love. The contemporary Polish writer treads in the footsteps of Barnes: both at the level of language and imagery, as well as subject matter and symbolism relating to issues of femininity, motherhood and sexuality. The artist captures Barnes’ visual and photographic imagination, which is in correlation with other artists of the first half of the 20th century (e.g. Hans Bellmer), to build an image of love at the end of the 20th century.

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