Obrazy pamięci w „Bliskich wodach” Juliena Gracqa

Abstrakt

The work of Julien Gracq (born Louis Poirier, 1910–2007) was first presented to the Polish audience at the end of the last century, when Literatura na Świecie (Literature in the World) dedicated him one of its issues (1999, No. 9) and published Bernhild Boie’s study introducing to the collected works of this author and fragments of his texts. So far, there have been published three book of this author in Polish, translated by Adam Wodnicki (Brzegi Syrtów [Le Rivage des Syrtes], 2008; Bliskie wody [Les Eaux étroites], 2008; Król Rybak [Le Roi pêcheur], 2009).

As one of the essential features of Gracq’s writing is considered the plasticity of his language. This aspect has been pointed out by both French (Boie, Bernard Vouilloux) and Polish (Andrzej Jarosz) authors. Particular emphasis is placed on the imaging of Gracq’s best-known novel, The Opposing Shore (Le Rivage des Syrtes), which became the subject of Jarosz’s study. The proposed article is a continuation of Jarosz’s considerations, this time on the essay The Narrow Waters (Les Eaux étroites). The text focuses on the ways of creating pictorial references with the use of words, evoked by sensual impulses perceived from the reality surrounding the subject and from memory, treated by the narrator as a kind of museum of imagination, from which single words, sounds and images accumulated earlier can be extracted. All these impulses, combining and overlapping, form multi-level references, identified with a particular place and time.