“Take him somewhere where you guys are hanging out with those ropes” Kuczok – Mountains – Literariness

Abstract

The article touches upon climbing and speleological themes in Wojciech Kuczok’s prose. The author analyzes traces and potential influences of the poetics of mountaineering literature in Kuczok’s narratives and essays – in selected sketches of the collections Poza światłem, Moje projekcje, in the stories Spiski. Przygody tatrzańskie and the Rozmemuary journal. What is interesting is the relationship with model narrative genres – the bujdałka (a mountain record) and the expedition story, as well as the mode of evoking and activating a central quality of the literary-aesthetic mountaineering relationship, namely, the “corporeal sublime,” which is a response to the problem of expressing the specificity of the kinesthetic experience of the rock vertical space. Kuczok fits into the “kinesthetic culture” typical of mountaineering and speleology – he uses professional lexis, knowledge and discourse. He rewrites his own non-literary movement and space
practices – he fictionalizes and conceptualizes the experience of mountain space, combining it with the literary nature he has developed. A gradual increase in climbing and speleological themes in Kuczok’s work coincides with an increasing popularity of mountain literature and its position in relation to the mainstream
literature.