Kosmopolska Artura Beckera – przestrzeń otwarta, przestrzeń poszukiwania własnej tożsamości

Abstract

As a Polish writer of German-language works, Artur Becker sees his work and his biography in his self-narrative at the interface of the German language he chose and the Polish culture and language he abandoned due to his emigration to Germany. His novels address the crisis of identity and the search for identity of his characters in exile or on their return to their homeland of Warmia and Masuria. Becker’s collection of essays, published in Polish under the title Kosmopolska i Kosmopolacy. W poszukiwaniu europejskiego domu. Eseje (2019), is also a discourse on the search for identity. The article is an attempt to characterise the Becker’s definition of the term Kosmopolska, which incidentally comes from another émigré writer, A. Bobkowski. Kosmopolska turns out to be an open space, constructed narratively, that is a space of searching for and creating one’s identity in narrative and through language. This form of defining identity is part of P. Ricoeur’s and Ch. Taylor’s concepts of narrative identity. At each stations of the journey through Kosmopolska, Becker explains the many cultural patterns and codes rooted in Polish identity, but also shares his advice, literary experts, and thus becomes a mediator between cultures.