Kopiując śmierć. Patologiczne przestrzenie biura w „Kopiście Bartlebym” Hermana Melville’a i „Dziwaku” Elizy Orzeszkowej
Copying Death. Pathological Office Spaces in Herman Melville’s "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and Eliza Orzeszkowa’s "Dziwak"

Summary/Abstract: This article brings forth a comparativist attempt at juxtaposing two short stories – Herman Melville’s "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and "Dziwak" by Eliza Orzeszkowa – that can be deemed to be literary testimonies to the changes in comprehending, valuing and evaluating new forms of professional activity that were taking shape upon the foundation of modern capitalism. In his willingness to show universality and supranational nature of mechanisms governing the literary thinking of clerks and their work, the author starts with presenting the profession itself, offering a comparative analysis of the appearances of the short-story characters – scriveners, descriptions of the space they function in, relationships between them and their associates. An insight is also made in these individuals personal lives and sexuality. At last, a look is taken on their strategies of escape from a pathological and adversely valuated space of office buildings. A scrivener’s work does not fit into a measurable order of production, physicality, and eroticism, as traditional for the nineteenth century; instead, it is situated in the order of reproduction, detachment from reality, and asexuality, yielding bruising consequences to individuals entangled in the system.

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