Czego nie widać w lustrze, czyli o przekraczaniu ciemności w „Katarynce” Bolesława Prusa
What Is Unseen in the Mirror, or Trespassing Darkness in “Katarynka” (“Barrel Organ”) by Bolesław Prus

Summary/Abstract: The article is an interpretation of Bolesław Prus’ "Katarynka" ("Barrel Organ"). The novella is viewed here through the prism of human sensual experience: sight, its absence, hearing, and above all – touch. Constrained by sight is Mr Tomasz, whose perception of the world is paradoxically scanty due to his sight-centrism. It is, however, the case only to the moment he discerns the novella’s second protagonist, the blind girl. The girl can be observed in the process of losing her sight and her adaptation to the new, painful situation. She realises that she is no longer a sight-centered subject experiencing the reality to which she was so much attached. The mirror placed in the title of the article plays the function of a leading motif due to which we may observe the changes of the subject perceiving the reality in Prus’ novella. To add, an important role in the novella’s interpretation is played by the problem of spatiality – the change in perceiving space after the loss of sight. In sum, the considerations, licensed by the text’s interpretation, lead to the conclusion about the writer’s great empathy and psychological knowledge. In the article the author refers to the thoughts by, inter alia, William James, Jean-François Lyotard, Eugène Minkowski, Julian Ochorowicz, Jan Władysław Dawid and Bolesław Prus himself from his "Wędrówka po ziemi i niebie" ("Travel on Earth and in Heaven").

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