Horsta Bienka Dom zgazet
"The Home Made Out of Newspaper" in the Prose of Horst Bienek

Summary/Abstract: „It is no longer possible to return to the childhood ho- me. But we can imagine that childhood, describe it and, in this fashion, halt it in time…” wrote Horst Bienek, the author of atetralogy about Gliwice (Die erstePolka, Septemberlicht, Zeit ohne Glocken) and other recollections (Reise in die Kindheit, Birken und Hochöfen.Eine Kindheit in Oberschlesien and Beschre- ibung einer Provinz) also relating to this particular town. The experience of losing aprivate homeland comprises an anthropological problem, which played arelevant part in Bienek’s writings: the Silesian motif of the author of the Gliwice reminiscences can be de- ciphered as aresponse to the question: who am I, and where is my home? In the case of Bienek, the site – Gliwice – assumes the form of aphantasm of the ima- gination, despite the detailed and precise descrip- tions. Reality succumbs to idealisation and hence to sui generis deformation. Bienek was well aware that the mythologisation of space is aspecific process of imbuing with autobiographical recollections. He also realised that by travelling across Silesia he finally en- ded the rite of passage and experienced something that should have occurred along time ago by severing all ties with his unfinished childhood. The literary psychological portrait of the inhabitants of Silesia, constructed by Bienek out of his emotions, can be of help while recreating acultural reality in away cha- racteristic for the historian and the anthropologist of culture. After all, Beschreibung einer Provinz recalls in places an on-the spot record and the so-called field notes of an anthropologist. The author used for his purposes the same sort of sources as those studied by the ethnographer. He obtained information about Si- lesia by reading old newspapers, calendars, nineteen- th-century novels as well as old medical and sightse- eing descriptions. Bienek collected telephone books, city plans and the biographies of real persons from the time of his childhood. He was also familiar with the reminiscences of the former residents of the town.

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