Home of All Fears—Poland. Metaphor of Poland As a Home In Dawid Kornaga’s Local Anaesthesia
Home of All Fears—Poland. Metaphor of Poland As a Home In Dawid Kornaga’s Local Anaesthesia

Author(s): Michał Wolski
Subject(s): Polish Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: Poland; Local Anaesthesia; vampires; home; satire; homeland;
Summary/Abstract: The aim of the paper is to philologically analyze Dawid Kornaga’s novel Local Anaesthesia (Znieczulenie miejscowe, 2008) from the perspective of using the metaphor of Poland as a home of all vampires and other creatures. Kornaga presents in his work 25 profiles of demonic characters (19 of them are vampires and 6 are other wraiths known from Slavic folklore), and all of them in different ways—involving irony, cynicism and humour—represents specific approach to thinking of Poland as a home, but also homeland, burden or duty. Construction of the novel is similar to silva rerum and allows great transparency of plot elements, time periods, relations between characters and their sentiments concerning their living place. It leads to the peculiar collage of attitude towards Poland, which is annotated with ironic narrative commentary and allows to recognize a group portrait of Poles, who are (in Kornaga’s novel) nothing less than a nation of vampires.

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