„In partibus infidelium”, czyli poetyka pejzażu wewnętrznego
“In Partibus Infidelium,” or Internal Landscape Poetics

Stanisław Antoni Mueller and Schulzean Context

Summary/Abstract: The article attempts to analyse a fragment of the novel “Henryk Flis,” most representative of Stanisław Antoni Mueller’s lyrical prose. In the line of reasoning, it points at numerous similarities between Bruno Schulz’s modernist-symbolic language and Mueller’s conception. Exploiting the romantic topoi of romantic space of internal landscape, on the level of fiction Mueller composes an image of childhood memory which, referring to the Latin term “in partibus infidelium”, is called ‘in the regions of infidels.’ Essential for the dynamics of the entirety of images are first and foremost the topos of “world-gone-awry,” daredevil concept of speed, theatricalisation and ironisation, as well as the motive of deluge seen as a transposition of private semantic catastrophe. A constant fluctuation of lyricised space is treated as a crucial component of the protagonist creation who is an ironist in Kierkegaard’s view, a melancholic (in that it contaminates aquatic motifs ascribed to the topos of Saturnalia), as well as Schulzean child-creator (demiurge). It must, however, be borne in mind that on the global level Mueller’s narration is merely incrusted with poetic fragments. They are an immanent feature of Schulz’s creativity in general.

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