Self, Other Self and the Intimate Other. Adam Mickiewicz and Jan Čačot

Abstract

Comparing the trajectories of Adam Mickiewicz and Jan Čačot, two authors with similar starting positions, the paper discusses the complex relations between literary space and literary career as hypothetically paradigmatic for colonized territories such as 19th century Lithuania. Revising postcolonial approaches to Mickiewicz’s literary work, the paper’s theoretical outline links Pascale Casanova’s thoughts on the interaction of regional provenience, literary-structural points of reference and poetological orientations to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘space of possibles’ that connects the individual actions taken by an author with positions potentially available in the literary sphere. With the two authors’ experience of exterritoriality in mind the main part of the article reflects their differing (poetological) conceptualizations of ‘self ’, ‘other’ and ‘other self ’ and the aesthetical strategies of representing their interrelations. At last, these conceptualizations result in the axiomatic of literary centers, e.g. Vilnius and Paris, linking again the individual’s trajectory with the literary space in a broader historiographical perspective.