Mythopoetics of Space in the Novel “House of Day, House of Night” by O. Tokarczuk

The article deals with Olga Tokarczuk’s novel “House of Day, House of Night” (“Dom dzienny, dom nocny”, 1998). The writer calls it a “constellation novel” written in the unusual form of “constellation”. The book contains a mixture of allusions, references, quotations, as well as fragmentary, incoherent plots. The correlation of the text with C.G. Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious and the local historical “myths” of the border region of Lower Silesia is also analyzed. The following motifs take center stage: home, sleep, homelessness and their relation to questions of identity, memory and cultural continuity. It is argued that the motif of “shared dreams” and archetypes serve the task of expressing a unified irrational space associated with the mythopoetic understanding of reality. The house is seen as a key motif symbolising identity, as well as connecting with the sense of unrootedness and homelessness caused by the Second World War and forced migration of the population. Tokarczuk addresses the multicultural heritage of the borderland of Lower Silesia and creates an empathetic narrative of a complex historical period, recovering memories of the hushed Polish and German experiences of resettlement. Olga Tokarczuk as a way of modelling geographical space perceives the literary work. The writer, in fact, “recreates” a place, giving it a new life, thanks to which it acquires an identity. The conclusion is made that, as Olga Tokarczuk’s work shows, literature can play a great role in rethinking human existence, overcoming the traumas of the past and contributing to the formation of new stories that unite different peoples.