Czy moja Europa to twoja Europa? Stasiuk i Andruchowycz
Is my Europe your Europe

Summary/Abstract: A pretext for the article is a book Moja Europa [My Europe], published jointly by Yuri Andrukhovych and Andrzej Stasiuk in 2000, subtitled Two essays on the Europe called Central, while Andrukhovych’s essay has the title Środkowowschodnie rewizje [Central-Eastern Revisions], and Stasiuk’s essay – Dziennik okrętowy [Ship’s Logbook]. This literary project has an almost ostentatious borderland nature and excellently fits in the literary and general humanist fashions of recent years. Two writers, a Pole and a Ukrainian, friends for a long time, decide to show their viewpoints of Europe – their own, private, different than the official one, drawn anew on personal maps of cultural fascinations. The subtitle comments the title, provides it with a narrowing and simultaneously a negation, declares the presence of an object called Central Europe, taking it instantly into quotes, since its existence is limited to the use of the name. Reaching for this book, we wind up in the very middle of problems connected with definition of this strange land – the more attention we pay to it, the more it becomes elusive and vague. Central Europe only exists because we keep writing about it.

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