Borders can be literal and figurative, but their effects are always real. The border between what is today Germany and Poland has been drawn multiple times over the past centuries. While these changes often did not align with people's ethnic, local, or personal attachments, they did not necessarily generate animosities until the rise of nationalism in the modern period. Thus, for much of the twentieth century, the border was narratively constructed as a dividing line. The situation changed with the end of the Cold War, and narratives after 1989 often articulate the borderland as a site of contact and of mixing. However, at times writers and artists go beyond this transnational perspective. This dissertation argues that some German and Polish border narratives express entangled histories and "defocalized" identities by engaging in a practice of radical de-bordering and reshuffling of border constellations. To analyze such phenomena, I adapt the concept of "border poetics" to denote a narrative and cultural practice that places historically and socially situated borders and border experiences in relation with figurative boundaries. This means that "real" borderlands become staging grounds for symbolic border crossings that represent fundamentally human experiences or questions of identity, e.g., the border between life and death, dream and reality, and interrogations of gender, race, or ethnicity. Because border poetics rests on the same productive tension between the particular and the universal that also drives cosmopolitanism, I argue for viewing border poetics as an idiom of the cosmopolitan imagination. Instead of foregrounding border poetics as an analytical tool, my study stresses that it is a practice. In five chapters, I locate the practice in the broader history of German-Polish relations; map the phenomenon in theoretical terms by drawing on scholarship in the fields of border studies, cosmopolitanism, and world literature; and interrogate and expand the theoretical framework by testing it on specific narratives. The analysis of select literary and cultural texts focuses on story, discourse, and performance, and I show that these narratives engage in transborder conversations that do not ignore or homogenize difference, but examine it critically and imagine border spaces in new ways

Examines how contemporary German and Polish novels reimagine borderlands as cosmopolitan spaces by engaging in border poetics, a narrative practice that relates political borders to figurative boundaries.Globalization notwithstanding, we live in an age of borders, as the ongoing conflict at Europe's eastern edge reminds us. Borders are meant to protect, but they more often divide and exclude. This book, however, focuses on literature that pushes back against the divisiveness of borders, advocating for transborder connections and criticizing exclusionary boundaries. It examines novels that reimagine past and present German-Polish borderlands as cosmopolitan spaces. Novels by Nobel Prize winners Olga Tokarczuk and Günter Grass are discussed alongside works by authors less well known internationally: the Polish Inga Iwasiów, the German Tanja Dückers, and the German-Polish Sabrina Janesch.The book utilizes and elaborates the concept of border poetics, a narrative and cultural practice that places political borders in relation to less concrete borders such as those of gender, ethnicity, or class, as well as in relation to epistemological and ontological boundaries: of language, knowledge, even reality. Because border poetics rests on the same productive tension between the particular and the universal that drives contemporary notions of cosmopolitanism, the book argues for the practice as an expression of what sociologist Gerard Delanty has termed "cosmopolitan imagination." The richly contextualized analysis is framed within transnational German Studies and draws on border studies, cosmopolitanism, European literature, and world literature.ders in relation to less concrete borders such as those of gender, ethnicity, or class, as well as in relation to epistemological and ontological boundaries: of language, knowledge, even reality. Because border poetics rests on the same productive tension between the particular and the universal that drives contemporary notions of cosmopolitanism, the book argues for the practice as an expression of what sociologist Gerard Delanty has termed "cosmopolitan imagination." The richly contextualized analysis is framed within transnational German Studies and draws on border studies, cosmopolitanism, European literature, and world literature.ders in relation to less concrete borders such as those of gender, ethnicity, or class, as well as in relation to epistemological and ontological boundaries: of language, knowledge, even reality. Because border poetics rests on the same productive tension between the particular and the universal that drives contemporary notions of cosmopolitanism, the book argues for the practice as an expression of what sociologist Gerard Delanty has termed "cosmopolitan imagination." The richly contextualized analysis is framed within transnational German Studies and draws on border studies, cosmopolitanism, European literature, and world literature.ders in relation to less concrete borders such as those of gender, ethnicity, or class, as well as in relation to epistemological and ontological boundaries: of language, knowledge, even reality. Because border poetics rests on the same productive tension between the particular and the universal that drives contemporary notions of cosmopolitanism, the book argues for the practice as an expression of what sociologist Gerard Delanty has termed "cosmopolitan imagination." The richly contextualized analysis is framed within transnational German Studies and draws on border studies, cosmopolitanism, European literature, and world literature.e as an expression of what sociologist Gerard Delanty has termed "cosmopolitan imagination." The richly contextualized analysis is framed within transnational German Studies and draws on border studies, cosmopolitanism, European literature, and world literature.

“One of the finest and most original writers…and one of the greatest Polish writers of [the 20th] century. [Herbert] is a figure comparable to, say, T. S. Eliot or W. H. Auden.” —Edward Hirsch, The New Yorker Polish essayist, poet, and spiritual leader of his nation’s anti-Communist movement, the late Zbigniew Herbert is a literary giant whose writings are revered throughout Europe and the world. A companion volume to the author’s Collected Poems (Ecco 2007), Collected Prose is the only English language edition of the award-winning writer’s prose works collected in a single, beautiful, accessible volume—including in their entirety his renowned Labyrinth on the Sea, Still Life with a Bridle, King of the Ants, and Barbarian in the Garden.

The Poetics of the Avant-garde in Literature, Arts, and Philosophy presents a range of chapters written by a highly international group of scholars from disciplines such as literary studies, arts, theatre, and philosophy to analyze the ambitions of avant-garde artists. Together, these essays highlight the interdisciplinary scope of the historic avant-garde and the interconnectedness of its artists. Contributors analyze topics such as abstraction and estrangement across the arts, the imaginary dialogue between Lev Yakubinsky and Mikhail Bakhtin, the problem of the “masculine ethos” in the Russian avant-garde, the transformation of barefoot dancing, Kazimir Malevich’s avant-garde poetic experimentations, the ecological imagination of the Polish avant-garde, science-fiction in the Russian avant-garde cinema, and the almost forgotten history of the avant-garde children’s literature in Germany. The chapters in this collection open a new critical discourse about the avant-garde movement in Europe and reshape contemporary understandings of it.

This book is a survey of Polish letters and culture from its beginnings to modern times. Czeslaw Milosz updated this edition in 1983 and added an epilogue to bring the discussion up to date.

The Routledge World Companion to Polish Literature offers an introduction to Polish literature through thirty-three case studies, covering works from the Middle Ages up to the present day. Each chapter draws on a text or body of work, examining its historical context, as well as its international reception and position within world literature. The book presents a dual perspective on Polish literature, combining original readings of key texts with discussions of their two-way connections with other literatures across the globe. With a detailed introduction offering a narrative overview, the book is divided into six sections offering a chronological pathway through the material. Contributors from around the world examine the various cultural exchanges at play, with each chapter including: Definitions of key terms and brief overviews of historical and political events, literary eras, trends, movements, groups, and institutions for those new to the area Analysis and notes on translations, including their hidden dimensions and potential Textual focus on poetics, such as strategies of composition, style, and genre A range of historical, sociological, political, and economic contexts From medieval song through to the contemporary novel, this book offers an interpretive history of Polish literature, while also positioning its significance within world literature. The detailed introductions make it accessible to beginners in the area, while the original analysis and focused case studies will also be of interest to researchers.

Although their subjects, styles, and techniques often differ, in total these poems make clear the distinctions between the nature of poetry in Eastern Europe and that in the West. While several of the languages represented here are limited to a small number of speakers, each has a commitment to the central role of poetry in the history of its people and as a source of their unity.