CENTRAL EUROPEAN PATH TO WORLDLINESS FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SO-CALLED SMALL LITERATURES

Although the acceptance of a text into world literature is directly related to the importance of its country and language of origin, works from so-called small literatures can also become part of the global canon. They establish their “worldliness” not on the power of extra literary moments, but on the ability to constitute the world using the aestheticization of national images. This article analyses four literary-historical examples of authors (Ivan Horváth, Karel Čapek, Sandor Márai, and Witold Gombrowicz) attempting to become world authors through their “Central Europeanism”. Horváth seeks artistic inspiration for his dreamlike visions in French culture, Čapek attracts readers with the universality of his humanistic ideas, Márai embodies intellectual the nostalgia for the vanished Habsburg Empire, and Gombrowicz intuitively anticipates the postmodern grotesque. Despite their differences in genre and theme, these authors are connected by their inclination towards the West. At the same time, they all demonstrate that in this distinctive and indigenous (in terms of values) “interspace” between the West and the East, there is no “pure” national literature that does not synthesize a diverse foreign element. It is obvious that the way of this aestheticization of local “peripherality” implies their possible paths to “worldliness”.