„There is still this duality”. Around the autothematic discourse in Andrzej Chciuk’s dilogy “Atlantis” and “Lunar Land”

Abstract

Atlantis and Lunar Land are the best known and most frequently researched artistic works by Andrzej Chciuk (1920–1978), a Polish writer who emigrated from his hometown in 1939. Literary scholars paid special attention to the language of dilogy (primarily about the bałak) and depictions of a provincial town and its atmosphere as well as multiculturalism. New readings – and thus new interpretations – of Chciuk’s works appeared thanks to the translation of Atlantis and Lunar Land into Ukrainian in 2011. Ukrainian scholars and researchers discuss Chciuk’s works in terms of, among others, authoritative ethno-cultural models, constructing narrative identity or auto/bio/geo/graphy. This paper examines the self-reference discourse of dilogy, in which such aspects as autobiographical memory and cultural memory, constructing the identity of multicultural borderland, self-narrative activity and spatial framework of the autobiographical „self” are also mentioned. Finally, the paper also addresses the strategy of auto/bio/geo/graphical pact.