Poszukiwanie tożsamości w Domu dziennym, domu nocnym Olgi Tokarczuk

Abstract

The author of the article discusses the topic of the search for identity in House of day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk and focuses her attention on examining the relation between the narrator (who is a character at the same time) and Marta – one of the persons in the novel. She notices a complicated relation between the two characters. The point is that they share each other’s point of view, and what is more – they also exchange roles. While they do it, Marta becomes the second narrator. Using the term of conversation, which, according to Hans-Georg Gadamer, is understood as an exchange of thoughts and marking borders between “I” and “you”, the article is classified into the circle of problems within the contemporary humanistic approach. These problems are correlated with investigating borders and sources of identity. The author of the article also deals with narration understood as telling a story, which is the main subject in Tokarczuk’s novel. This article belongs to the circle of postmodern studies, concerning the narrative identity which has its source in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Understanding the existence as a process happening in time makes it necessary to tell a story of existence which will make sense after that. At the same time, the identity of a human being is better understood. The novelist follows the same rule and writes about various stories of people living in Nowa Ruda. They live in different epochs, from the Middle Ages to the present day. The aim of this article is to answer the question whether there is a way to describe identity. The reading and interpretation of Tokarczuk’s novel, as well as the above thoughts lead to the conclusion that the term of identity is inseparably correlated with time, and telling a story becomes the most efficient way to discover it.