%0 Journal Article
%T Zagajewski’s Reflections on the Interior
%A Shallcross, Bożena
%J Konteksty Kultury
%V 2023
%R 10.4467/23531991KK.23.003.17906
%N Volume 20 Issue 1
%P 10-15
%K interior, things, objects, denial, withdrawal, perspective, optic ideology
%@ 2083-7658
%D 2023
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/konteksty-kultury/article/zagajewskis-reflections-on-the-interior
%X The text asks the question about Adam Zagajewski’s understanding of the interior space of one’s home. Guided by his post-memory, Zagajewski describes a coping mechanism based on withdrawal into one’s place and its interiority that was construed by the Poles resettled from former Polish territories in the East as an etui, a cover protecting the traumatized selves and their memorabilia from the new, unacceptable reality. Such a protective etui created by the four walls of one’s room was during communism a site of collecting and even hoarding broken things. Obsessive collecting lead to the destruction of even a modicum of comfort and the optic perspective in the over-crowded rooms. The consequence of these two processes of interiorization allows the author to refute the notion that Zagajewski was an aesthete.