This study by Katarzyna Bartoszyńska, apparently modest, offering comparisons between selected pairs of Polish and Irish novels––composed of an introduction, summary, references, an index of persons, and a subject index––goes far beyond what the reader might expect. Juxtaposed are the following: the 1776 novel Mikołaja Doświadczyńskiego przypadki (The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom) by Ignacy Krasicki; Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726); The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki (1804 and 1810/47; originally written in French); Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin (1820); The Heathen by Narcyza Żmichowska (1846/61); The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890); Samuel Beckett's novel trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable; English ed.1955–58); and Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz (1938). Her argument goes further, however, than merely demonstrating the similarities. While the detailed argument, versatility in novelistic contexts, and aptness of the proposed analysis fit the framework of a comparative study, Estranging the Novel is not just another such work. Neither does it seek to prove some particular kinship between the European peripheries. Extending the canon of European literature by including new books representing the so-called “small” cultures or minor languages is not the author's intent, either. The scholar's objective and pursuit is different: namely, to determine an image of world literature through the method she applies. It is not quite important, in her concept, what renders the works by Potocki and Maturin, or Żmichowska and Wilde, similar. Pivotal, however, is what does it tells us about the history of novel, the structuring of world literature, and the constructing of a world––an area that becomes visible in Jacques Rancière's terms: one that is graspable with reflection and attention. The well thought-out selection of novels and the consistent quest for modifications implied by the investigation into the interrelations between “peripherality” and genre form (rather than, for instance, the novel's location and its subject-matter), enables one to refer to the present-day key trends in research on novel.
The individual analytic threads lead to certain interesting considerations that, like an open horizon or an image multiplied when reflected by several mirrors, lead even further and deeper. The eighteenth-century novels discussed show that works conceived “with delay,” or further from the center, seek a place for themselves within the system of utopian and/or travel literature through internal polemics with binding genre standards. Whilst Swift resorts to satirical concepts, Krasicki, like the prime, uses irony masterly. Their works offer a response to the dominance of the rational spirit of the Enlightenment, imbued with didacticism. Another set of novels, close to the Gothic genre, poses a question not only about the role of this convention in the genre's development––a role perhaps more important than we would have earlier admitted––but also about a novel, different and broader, understanding of novelistic realism. If one assumes that Gothic images are the night to the day's realism, it then follows that the unreal is also part of the realistic domain. This is an absolutely key issue: the solution (or, clarification) might prevent the idle and academic idea to break down the novel forms that evoke in the reader a sense of participation in a real (un)reality into types and subtypes, such as social realism or magical realism. Among the exquisite scholars who deal with the issue of limits of realism that never cease to shift (owing to the interventions of film and multimedia technologies, among other factors), I would add John Bender on the relations between myth and the eighteenth-century novel.
The section comparing Narcyza Żmichowska's novel The Heathen (available in an English translation by Ursula Phillips) with the noted work by Oscar Wilde is very convincing and extremely interesting. Indirect evidence is provided by Ephraim Lessing Gotthold's treatise Laocoon; or, On the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Bartoszyńska analyzes and interprets the motif of image/painting present in both works and its consequences for plot development and assessment of the characters’ moral standing. As it appears, it is not a static portrayal of the figure, as immortalized with use of the easel, in a frozen pose, but life in motion and time, susceptible to change, to the burden of obligations, and to the ups and downs of life. It becomes the appropriate metaphor, or image, of human existence. Bartoszyńska is cross with the apparent excess of biography-centered interpretations in the reception of The Heathen among Polish authors. I think this should rather be satisfactory to her as it precisely conforms to what she finds most interesting––namely, the association between the temporal and spatial location of work, on the one hand, and the quest for form, on the other. Żmichowska's sensitivity to the spiritual disassembly resulting from the experiences of one's life stems from her own existential baggage: the sufferings and defeats after the failing revolutionary acts of the years 1846–49 that broke up the unity of a circle of her friends and the mutual trust of a group of young people who had been wont to meet “at the fireplace.” Only a novel that might tell a story of redemption of a weakness or treason, or contribute to the transformation of its characters makes sense, according to that novelist. The Heathen is highly idiomatic and singular, comparable to the hapax legomenon in the structure of language––and this owing to the emotional involvement, the knot braided of biographies, history, and a search for genre. It is precisely for these reasons that I would oppose the perception of Żmichowska's novel as a queer tale. Although Bartoszyńska seems to be willing to refer just to the homoeroticism reflected in the novel's form, rather than to the lifestyle of its author, I believe that the proposed queer reading obscures the horizon of this piece, with all its complexity.
Somewhat similarly to Żmichowska, Beckett and Gombrowicz searched for an impossible form that would, paradoxically enough, offer the speaking subject complete independence from any conditions or determinants it might have otherwise imposed––although the very concept of form seems to preclude one's chance of spreading their wings in such an unrestrained manner.
The author concludes her reading experience with the suggestion that a “weak theory” of the novel be built––that is, one which would exclude nothing while turning with inclusive generosity towards what is at the center and in the peripheries.
