The sacred space in the writings of Schulz and Tokarczuk

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The theme of the article is the sacred space, understood as a cosmic area, providing the man with protection, and being his steady point of reference in the world. The sacred space’s forming is connected with the man’s perception of a supernatural aspect of reality as well as of its symbolic character - which has been pointed out by Ernst Cassirer. So understood, the sacred space constitutes an essential epistemological category in the prose of Bruno Schulz and Olga Tokarczuk. The present article shows, with the help of Mircea Eliade’s, Carl Gustav Jung’s oraz Gaston Bache- lard’s theories, different aspects of the sacred space, and also the multiple functions it has in the Cinnamon Shops and in the novels Prawiek i inne czasy (The Preage and Other Times) and Dom dzienny, dom nocny (Daytime house, Nighttime House). - not only as a central place isolated from the chaos of surrounding areas. Also considered to be the cosmic sacred space are the body, and - most of all - the psyche of a man, being a shelter for his dreams and memories. The article’s aim is, then, to prove that despite the ongoing secularization of the world, the man’s connection with an isolated, mythicized space filled with symbolic elements, plays a vital role in his existence. That fact can be confirmed by the unflagging interest taken in the theme of the sacred space by the highly diversified modem and postmodern literature.