Tenderness of the Hetero/auto/a/nomous Narrator by Olga Tokarczuk

Abstract

“The tender narrator” in Olga Tokarczuk’s essays appears as a construct that mediates between the text and reality. It is a multifunctional transmitter of stories that makes various experiences available through focalisation and changing points of view, calling for care and responsibility as acts of sensitivity and courage in relation with the world. “The tender narrator” exists in a force field in which spheres overlap: a fixed order that they are subjected to, though which they have not established (heteronomy), the element of life, eluding (all/human) orders (anomy), independence of a figure, perceived in motion, with unique properties resulting from the author’s individual decisions (the autonomy of the narrator as a textual subject).

The texts included in the collection Czuły narrator (Tender narrator) published in 2020 are meta-and paratextual in relation to the mainstream of artwork – Tokarczuk’s novel writing, comment on reality, refer to language as a communication system, relate to the experience of reading (and the reception of art in general), express the idea of writing and the concept of literature adopted by the creator.