- 'In his literary worlds, Grass, playing games with the past, invariably raised important questions of the present day and the human condition, thrown into the vortex of the great history,' says dr hab. Miłosława Borzyszkowska-Szewczyk, prof. UG, Faculty of Philology, UG. The Research Workshop on Borderline Memory Narratives (Institute of German Philology UG) together with the Günter Grass Association in Gdańsk invite you to jointly read the space of the City in dialogue with literature. The first literary walking tour will take place on August 17, 2021.

- 'The laureate of the Literary Nobel Prize (1999) not only created the well-known literary myth of Gdańsk and carried it around the world, introducing the city and the region to world literature. He perceived art as a medium for socio-cultural dialogue. Drawing a lesson from his personal experience with the Third Reich, the artist was making a reckoning with the past, he was looking for a vaccine for the -isms eating away at the world,' - convinces dr hab. Miłosława Borzyszkowska-Szewczyk, prof. UG from the Faculty of Philology, UG. She stresses that his literary image of Gdańsk as a cultural borderland influences both the process of shaping the identity of Gdańsk inhabitants and the imagination of visitors. - 'Texts by "a writer from Wrzeszcz" (Lech Bądkowski) and the creative ferment in Gdańsk literature after 1989, that they provoked, became an inspiration for the Polish movement of the " provincial rebellion". It emphasises the difference and specificity of the experience of "peripheral" regions in relation to national centres,' she adds.

The starting point for the walks, which will be held as part of Grassomania 13, will be the work of Günter Grass, an honorary doctorate holder of the University of Gdańsk (1993) and author of, among others, the 'Gdańsk Trilogy'. The walks are planned for August, September and October.

The event includes two forms of discovering the city:

Three bilingual walks (in Polish and German) PoGRASSujmy po Gdańsku/ In Danzig unterwegs mit Günter Grass (17 VIII and scheduled for 21 VIII and 28 VIII) for residents and guests of Gdańsk and the region with licensed guide Anna Kowalewska-Mróz, PhD student and author of a doctoral thesis on Gdańsk art in the prose of Grass and Stefan Chwin.

Four thematic walks, a continuation of last year's Wanderings with Günter Grass series, during which the guides will share the results of their Grass-studies:

Günter Grass and Solidarity - inspirations and controversies (dr hab. Marion Brandt, prof. UG, September 4),

Günter Grass and the Jewish Past of the City. Jewish inhabitants of Gdańsk in a dialogue with Grass (dr hab. Miłosława Borzyszkowska-Szewczyk, prof. UG, September 11),

Günter Grass in Dialogue with the Architecture of the Old and Main City (Anna Kowalewska-Mróz, September 25),

The Art of Gdańsk in the Prose of Günter Grass - Fascination, Inspiration, Correspondence/ Die Danziger Kunst in der Prosa von Günter Grass - Begeisterung, Inspiration, Korrespondenzen (Anna Kowalewska-Mróz, October 2, bilingual).

Walks are also conducted as part of the research and education project Wanderings with Günter Grass. Literary Cartography of the City Space, carried out by the Borderland Memory Narratives Research Workshop. Its methodological assumptions draw on such concepts as geopoetics, critical cartography, borderland and memory studies. The participants include a Germanist, a Polish philologist, an English philologist, a cultural expert and an art historian, i.e. dr hab. Marion Brandt, prof. UG, Andrzej Fac, mgr Anna Kowalewska-Mróz, prof. dr hab. Mirosław Ossowski, dr Marta Turska, mgr Marta Wróblewska, and it is headed by dr hab. Miłosława Borzyszkowska-Szewczyk, prof. UG. Dr Maciej Dajnowski from IFP is collaborating.

The interdisciplinary project will result, among other things, in the creation of a literary guide presenting routes inspired by Grass's work and its reception, as well as a multiplicity of perspectives on reading Grass's work.

The educational and research project and subsequent editions of Grass walks are realised in a broad coalition of institutions and associations, including in cooperation with the Günter Grass Gallery/ Gdańsk City Gallery, the Institute of Urban Culture, the Kashubian Institute, the Pomeranian Film Foundation in Gdynia, under the media patronage of the 'Rocznik Gdański' Gdańsk Scientific Society. The project is also included in M. Borzyszkowska's grant from the Programme of Support for Gdańsk Humanities of the University of Gdańsk. The walks are co-financed by the Gdańsk City Hall and the Gdańsk City Gallery.

- 'We invite those interested in the works of the Nobel Prize winner, his literary image of the City as a cultural borderland, the subject of the identity of the City and its cultural heritage, as well as issues of multiculturalism and multiethnicity,' - encourages dr hab. Miłosława Borzyszkowska-Szewczyk, prof. UG.

Registration for the walks from 21.08.2021: grass.gdansk@op.pl

more → narracjepogranicza.eu and grass-gdansk.org/wiadomosci/