From Exile to Migrancy: Eastern and Central European Models of Cosmopolitical Writing

Abstract In a comparative reading of Central European authors emigrating to the United States, I analyze the shifting role of the writer in the changing models of migrancy. World War II emigrations were often permanent, and the need to sustain contact with the old country as a repository of traditions turned the old country into a sacrosanct space. Writers were expected to support and reinforce the old country ethos. In post–World War II emigrations, including exiles repressed by communist regimes, a similar need is visible. Émigré writers were expected to assume the role of national bards, politically engaged in the cause of freedom for their compatriots. Reading authors who emigrated to the United States—Henryk Grynberg, Janusz Głowacki, and Dubravka Ugresić—I trace the development of what I propose to call the “cosmopolitical” agenda (a neologism linking cosmopolitanism with politics) in global migrant writing. The distinguishing feature of such cosmopolitical migrant writing from Central Europe is a particularly acerbic and language-driven sense of humor based on a self-deprecating, anarchistic attitude toward reality. They also offer subversive representations of the United States, where this space of freedom for an exile from a communist regime was also a space of oppression, repression, and silencing.