Reading Süskind Cover Image

Czytanie Süskinda
Reading Süskind

Author(s): Irena Jokiel
Subject(s): Literary Texts, Studies of Literature
Published by: Wydział Polonistyki Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: śmierć; fantazmat; metafory końca; groteska; ironia; death; interpretation; phantasm; intertextual relationship; metaphors of the end; grotesque; irony

Summary/Abstract: Plots created by Patrick Süskind are transparent and uncomplicated; they follow a conventional path, seemingly aloof from formal modernist experiments, and close with distinctive endings; in popular reception, they give a sense of confidence that even the most fantastic worlds, derived from the corners of imagination, may be set into a familiar and closed whole. Perhaps this simplicity makes it easy to be satisfied by their seductive plot and steer clear off tracks leading to the content encrypted within the deep structure. The author of the present paper attempts to interpret the short stories: {Maître Mussard's Bequest} and {The Story of Mr Sommer} as a metaphorical and grotesque vision of man's existential death anxiety.

  • Issue Year: 2016
  • Issue No: 6 (9)
  • Page Range: 339-349
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Polish