Podróż do wnętrza "Imperium": "Wschód najbliższy" oczami Ryszarda Kapuścińskiego

A Travel into the Interior of The Empire: “The Nearest East” through Ryszard Kapuściński’s Eyes The essay aims at illustrating the process of an absorption of an individual into the expanse of the external world. Such a process is perhaps most clearly manifest in the context of travel, in which the self becomes estranged in the “alien” space. The article attempts to present some of the “alterations” of the explored space and transformations of the traveler’s Weltanschauung resulting from such an internalization. Ryszard Kapuściński’s The Empire (Imperium) serves as an example of a travel narrative, whose discourse embodies mutual dependency between the internal and the external reality, discernible as soon as the explorer enters an unknown territory. The hereby presented analysis focuses upon somatic and empirical aspects of travel and the role their interaction plays in the revision of rational perceptions in the context of the discourse of the 20th century Polish reportage.