The City is Not the City: Two Approaches of How City Writers Compose Images of Urbanity

Abstract

This paper references two texts from contemporary city writers: Die Stadt ist nicht die Stadt, by Juliana Kálnay (2019), and Graz, Alexanderplatz, by Barbara Marković (2012). They are analysed in regard to how the authors present the cities they visit and the type of literary images of the cities they develop. The analysis of Kálnay’s text focuses on how she interweaves past and present of the city and interconnects both through a water motif. Furthermore, intertextual strategies evident through her referencing Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities are investigated. Marković’s Graz, Alexanderplatz is analysed according to its twofold structure of copied city text on the one side (of the double page) and commented city text and urban experiences on the other. Moreover, how far the text is connected to Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz is briefly discussed. It is shown that both authors use experimental strategies to structure their texts and grasp ‘their’ cities but that both also subliminally reflect on whether it is actually possible to present the ‘real’ city, and how far the attempts must remain cut-outs of urbanity, dependent on perspective, time and place.