The violence, outskirts and wildness of the nature. Image of the village in The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński

Abstract

The article concerns the subject of image of the Polish village present in The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński. Analysis is made from a point of view of the cultural anthropology using categories: own – fereign, orbis interior – orbis exterior, centre – outskirts, journey, child. In the anthropological decoding of the novel, the author of the article uses the terms of anthropology of memory that are helpful in this regard: autobiography, autobiographical memory, and trauma. The Polish village of the times of the Holocaust, shown in the novel, turns out to be a space for the hero’s journey, close to nature, located in the distant periphery of culture and civilization. Yet it is not a journey of initiation. The reason is the lack of the last, third element characteristic of the classical scheme of the rites of passage according to Arnold van Gennep. Inhabitants of the countryside, their lives and beliefs are shown as consistent with the ethnographic and sociological studies of the topic. The novel belongs to a trend that critically treats rural themes in contemporary literature.