William Davisson’s remarks on the 17th-century Poland based on Olga Tokarczuk’s story The Green Children

Abstract

Olga Tokarczuk draws the reader’s attention and makes them sensitive to complex, ambiguous, often hidden, and even metaphysical phenomena. The writer is particularly fascinated by the multifaceted reality, focused on various manifestations of strangeness, otherness and extraordinary. It should be noted that Polish culture is one of the most important issues raised by this outstanding writer. No wonder, because it is created by a man on whom the Nobel Prize winner focuses her attention with extraordinary insight, often in a stepwise manner. Reflections on broadly understood Polishness in Olga Tokarczuk’s story The Green Children is one of the stories described by the author in the collection Tales of the Bizarre published in 2018. In this work, stylized as a diary of an authentic historical figure, a Scottish doctor, botanist and researcher of peculiarities reports on his observations carried out on the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Will this peripheral country manage to interest him in some local phenomenon? Will it find a tempting alternative to human societies torn apart by wars and disasters? Will he manage to return from his trip to France? The paper attempts to characterize 17th-century Poland, reflecting on identity and borders, as well as on the place of man in the world of nature.