J.M. Coetzee in Kakania

This article provides a comprehensive discussion of J.M. Coetzee’s long-standing and multifaceted engagement with Central European history and literature. Drawing on a number of archivalrecords, it traces the evolution of Coetzee’s concern with writing from the “European core” and attempts to identify the reasons forhis aesthetic and ideological “comradeship” with a selected group of Central European writers across the north-south/east-westdivide. The article further argues in favour of recognizing Kakania - understood as a literary, historical, and cultural phenom-enon - as Coetzee’s primary mode of conceptualizing and proble-matizing his relationship with the Central European heritage. Special attention is paid to “At the Gate” - including the impact ofCzesław Miłosz’s and Zbigniew Herbert’s poetry on the character of Elizabeth Costello and her final “lesson” - which is considereda testament to Coetzee’s Kakanian patrimony, both aesthetic andideological, as well as an expression of the writer’s Central Europeanness.