„Na (…) tym niebie omdlewającej, kończącej się Europy”. O możliwych źródłach środkowoeuropejskiej melancholii
“In (…) this sky of fainting, ending Europe”. On Possible Sources of Melancholy in Central Europe

Author(s): Łukasz Książyk
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Central Europe; melancholy; Kundera; Brodsky; Gombrowicz
Summary/Abstract: The article aims to show that the sources of Central European melancholy stem from the very indefinability of the notion of Central Europe. The author, reconstructing, among others, Joseph Brodsky’s polemic against Milan Kundera’s concept of Central Europe, formulated in the 1980s, attempts to prove that Central Europe, which, on the one hand, is “imaginary geography” and, on the other, in Gombrowicz’s words: “(a place) somewhere between the East and West, where Europe is killing itself, (…) where the East and West are weakening each other”, is a melancholic figure itself.

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