Shards of Mirror in the Backstreets of the Town. On Michał Głowiński’s Recollections

The author analyses Michał Głowiński’s short story volumes Historia jednej topoli i inne opowieści [The History of One Poplar and Other Stories] and Kładka nad czasem [A Footbridge over Time] as well as a cycle of essays Widoczki z Miasteczka [Views from a Small Town] from Fabuły przerwane [Discontinued Plots] from the point of view of the way in which the writer constructs “little narratives” devoted to his home town. The context is provided by his literature studies works, which help consider questions important for both Głowiński the writer and Głowiński the literary theorist. Thus, the narrative strategies, the problem of mimesis and (re)constructing the past, the role of the social patterns of speaking and intertextual references, the shaping of space through portraying the characters and its symbolic ordering by the flâneur narrator, as well as the tension between the documentary and fiction, representation and trauma, and literary awareness and irreducible individuality are all examined in this light. The author of the essay also points out in what sense the difference between the realistic “mirror carried along a main road” and the “shattered mirror” used by Głowiński corresponds to the difference between “finding the time” and “darning the memory.