Miasto kroków. Krokami Wita Szostaka po Krakowie Chochołów .......... 111

THE CITY OF STEPS. A STROLL WITH WIT SZOSTAK IN THE CRACOW NOVEL CHOCHOŁY

Szostak’s vision of Cracow was fulfilled with his notes about this city, included in many interviews with this writer. In one of such interviews one can encounter a fact that before the completion of work the novel had a temporal title: The City of Steps. Szostak admits that he has been coming to the idea of novel about his city for a long time. In Chochoły the reflection on details of Cracow’s landscape is apparent. In regard to Cracow’s antropomorphism, the city can be treated as a one of the novel’s characters. Cracow’s animation appears, inter alia, in having internal organs by the city, e.g. intestines. Cracow the same as Chochoły’s characters puts on masks, literally and figuratively. The city saves topography, the system of streets and the layout of the buildings, and puts various masks in the different chapters: during the time of the carnival the city resembled Venice; in the other case this is the deserticolous city and then it puts on the mask of the seaside city. Cracow stays alive owing to the myths created by the main protagonist. Drifting away from realism in the imagery of the city leads to discovering Cracow even more beaming its own, unique spirit of the city of regal ghosts and Polish myths.