W świecie imion własnych. O funkcji imienia w „Nie kończącej się historii” Michaela Endego
IN THE WORLD OF PROPER NAMES. ON THE FUNCTION OF NAMES IN MICHAEL ENDE’S THE NEVER-ENDING STORY

Summary/Abstract: Not only scientists are interested in the meaning and function of proper names, their peculiar magic, links with culture, with its specific way of thinking and organizing the world. The problem also becomes an important component of works of literature, one of which, Michael Ende’s The Never-Ending Story, is the subject dealt of the present article. Numerous motifs of this contemporary fairy tale are connected with naming and using names, with the creative power of a name. Problems crucial to the general idea of the work, its philosophical and ethical message, are the issues of real vs. false names, the punishment of depriving someone of their name and the role of naming acts. In the presented world, it is by receiving names that objects achieve genuiness and permanence. Assigning an appropriate name, too, means establishing a new relationship between the naming subject and the named object; it is tantamount to the enactment of the relationship of ‘possession’.A peculiar necessity of naming, characteristic also of Ende himself, must be considered an integral component of his artistic method and associated with being a child, viewed as a peculiar way of understanding and organizing the world.

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