Wyobcowanie terytorialne na Pomorzu Zachodnim. O Homunculusie z tryptyku Britty Wuttke

Abstract

The article is based on the novel Homunculus z tryptyku by Britta Wuttke, a writer hailing from Międzyzdroje, while the comparative piece is Piotr Lachmann’s essay “Wypędzenie” po polsku. The main purpose of the paper is pointing to and describing an experience, presented in both literary works, which is named territorial alienation. It is a situation occurring when an individual lives in the same place, often in the same house or apartment, walks the same streets, visits the same buildings, but in their surroundings everything had changed - administration, population, the dominant nationality and religion, official language, names of streets and objects of architecture, culture, and customs. The most significant phenomena experienced by a territorially alienated character are: functioning with reference to two languages and cultures, a position of a stranger in relation to a dominant group, and the palimpsestness of space. The article analyses in detail the third of these phenomena, exemplified by Międzyzdroje, which becomes a metaphoric battlefield between the arrived Poles and the Germans who remained in the town, as well as between two generations of a family depicted in Homunculus z tryptyku.

Keywords

• Wuttke
• Lachmann
• German
• Międzyzdroje
• displacement
• Other