"Pantofel : historia mojego kuzyna" by Ludwik Sztyrmer : variations on the theme of a small biography and a grand library

This sketch attempts at grasping and defining the specificity of an autobiographical project which turns out to be the most essential construction element of Sztyrmer’s prose writing. The project s specificity consists in a willingness to extract from occurrences having been experienced their dormant potentiality, and in approaching one’s own biography as a script for a literary work. This technique of reprocessing and multiplication of an existential experience bears several traits of an essayed autobiography written out into a cycle. Consequently, a collection rendering a dynamic image of the "self" is meant, rather than a closed-up unambiguous work. It is this subjectivity of the character, displayed as it is at various angles, that determines the centre of Sztyrmer’s fictional world, if not actually becoming the only essential theme of the story being spun