From the Heart of the Country to the European Core: J. M. Coetzee and los polacos

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate Coetzee’s decades-long, multifaceted, and, essentially, transnational dialogue with Poland and its cultural production—from Coetzee’s encounter of Polish poetry in the early 1960s until his 2022 novel El polaco. It intends to argue that Coetzee’s preoccupation with Polish literature and culture is part of a larger strategy of seeking new alliances and partnerships across the north-south/east-west divide, of building an alternative “affective community,” and of, simultaneously, de- and reprovincializing oneself and one’s oeuvre. Most importantly, Coetzee’s dialogue with Poland will be interpreted as an attempt to seek one’s rightful ancestry: literary and cultural, as well as genetic. The article will argue that the figure of the Pole is not simply a literary trope or the subject of Coetzee’s scholarly/readerly interest, but an instrument of both: self-defacement and identification with his Polish heritage.