"The Königsberg text" in two poems : "Otkrytka iz goroda K." by Joseph Brodsky, and "Naujas atvirukas iš K. miesto" by Tomas Venclova

Plon konferencji: "Wrócić tam, gdzie nie było się dwadzieścia lat : Josifa Brodskiego powroty z historii" z dn. 06-08 grudzień 2013 r., Kraków. Streszcz. po ang., bibliogr.

The paper concerns the poetry of two dissidents from Eastern Europe - a Russian one, and a Lithuanian one: Josif Brodski and Tomas Venclova. The first part of the paper is factual: it’s a short outline of the history of their close friendship which started in 1966 in the USSR, and lasted till Brodski’s death in 1996. In the second part of the paper I describe a literary dialog between the two poets: firstly, I write about about both Russian and Lithuanian poems, which were dedicated by the author to, respectively, Venclova and Brodski, secondly about intertextual references and allusions in chosen poems, and thirdly - about Tomas Venclova’s papers on Brodski’s work. Third part of the paper is devoted to the intertextual interpretation of - mainly - two poems: Oткрытка из города К. by Josif Brodski, and Naujas atvirukas iš K. miesto (Nowa pocztówka z miasta K.) by Tomas Venclova, where the town of Königsberg / Kaliningrad is depicted as a place where both the lyrical persona, and the town itself (as a hero of the poem) experience a "limit-situation" of annihilation. The main thread leads to the reconstruction of the art of conducting the poetic dialog about relations between the human being, culture, and history, by the two poets deep-rooted in both East- and West European cultures, which they feel to be exiles from.