Paweł Panas
Konteksty Kultury, Volume 16 Issue 2, 2019, pp. 221-231
https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.19.022.11248The article presents an analysis of one of Zygmunt Haupt’s text – unpublished during the author’s lifetime – which grapples with the issue of identity of a Polish writer who settled in the United States. The artist’s exile self-awareness is determined by the spatiotemporal conceptual oppositions typical for the émigré condition: “here” and “there,” “now” and “then.” An additional, original element of Hauptian discourse is the metaphor of the “praił” [primordial clay] that he uses to describe the foundation of the long-established self-awareness that is confronted with the ubiquitous otherness. The analysis also encompasses the writer’s literary output and unpublished archival materials.