Przenikanie fabuł – prequel jako kreacyjne odtworzenie (wokół „Castorpa” Pawła Huellego)

Abstract

Castorp by Paweł Huelle published in 2004 is for the initiate reader connected with a search for various associations and relationships with The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. The author of the prequel takes up an interesting intertextual game with a work renown in the European culture and reconstructs the missing fragment of the biography of the protagonist. But most importantly, compared to the original novel, Huelle introduces to his pastiche a number of prefigurative narrative solutions, which results in the creation of a peculiar tension between both texts and in the revelation of an intriguing dialogue, with literature in the background. Although many elements from Mann’s work ‘permeate’ into the prequel, the author of Weiser Dawidek uses them to implement his own artistic concept, manifested in the creation of a separate world of human destinies, which are presented by him against a changed background of Gdańsk on the eve of the 20th century. Castorp from the prequel basically explores the nature of Polish-German relations and ponders over the mutual relations between these neighbouring nations. The chaotic atmosphere prevailing in the East, completely foreign to the protagonist at first, and the experienced otherness of that world (in line with the spirit of postcolonialism) are soon replaced by a growing historical and cultural awareness of this part of Europe. The pastiche is a work with a considerable autonomy of the content and at the same time a kind of prequel – a mirror image of the original novel. Taking into account the independence of the creation of the Polish writer, Castorp may be interpreted as a new perspective, a different way of capturing adventures of the main character in Davos. According to the literary concept of Huelle, the stranger from Hamburg is faced with new challenges and he immerses himself in complex interpersonal relations, to which his counterpart from the Mann’s novel has no access. The images from The Magic Mountain inserted into the crime-romance narration may be interpreted as an element of a literary game, in which the mental development of the protagonist resulting from the exploration of a culturally different reality appears to be much more important.