Two editions of Sny i kamienie by Magdalena Tulli

Abstract

The author offers a juxtaposition of two editions of Sny i kamienie [Dreams and Stones] by Magdalena Tulli in the context of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and urbanology. In the text he analyses the differences between the editions and discusses the origins of the modifications of the novel implemented by the writer. Those modifications sometimes facilitate while other times hinder the identification of the sources of her thinking, i.e., her reflection on urbanity. Sny i kamienie is a novel that constitutes a record of the experiences of the modernist transformation of two cities, Warsaw and Milan. The reading of Sny i kamienie is difficult at several levels: firstly, due to its treatise-like style and the narrator’s role of a seemingly uncritical eulogist of the urban planning order; secondly, due to a blurring of the traces of contaminations of various experiences: of Warsaw, of Milan, and that of a reader; and thirdly, due to a lack in Polish culture of any traditions of this type of prose text devoted to the city. The essay constitutes an attempt at reconstructing the possible contexts of the novel and how they influenced the alterations implemented by the writer in the more recent edition.