Der Schriftsteller als Geograph und Gastarbeiter: Die literarische Kartographie Andrzej Stasiuks
The Author as Geographer and ‘Gastarbeiter’. Andrzej Stasiuk’s Literary Cartography

Summary/Abstract: The Polish writer Andrzej STASIUK is one of the most successful literary cartographers of the ‘eastward shifted’ Central Europe. His literary essay-writing reacts to the ‘spatial revolution’ in Europe and presents the spatial-performative potential of geographically inspired writing (‘geopoetics’) in an incisive manner. STASIUK’s geopoetic project is based on his travel programme throughout East-Central European provinces that are designed as the quintessence of an other Europe. This area is clearly outlined in his writing. Significantly, the geographical boundary between German and Slavic territories, including the Polish-German border, thus becomes an insurmountable mental borderline. STASIUK’s project culminates in a confrontation of German and Slavic space. On the one hand STASIUK falls back on long existing topoi of the Central European literary discourse, on the other hand he projects an other (Slavic) Europe as the contrary to the West. The ambiguous relationship of this new literary topography of the other Europe to the political shows that this kind of writing has much to do with the art of transforming, and desire to transform, the political into the poetic and the poetic into a tool of the political.

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