Chaotyczny wymiar świata – Bohumil Hrabal

The study examines the poetics of chaos as developed by the 20th-century theory of literature, accentuating the historical roots of this idealistic strand of thinking (A. F. Losev, L. Shestov, M. Bachtin, etc.) and, at the same time, exploring the problem of employing the constructive potential of chaos in the interpretation of a contemporary literary text. The author concludes that chaos is most frequently manifest in the genological and mythological aspects and as a genre it is symbiotic with various forms of grotesque, parody and the dialogic principle. The last part of the study identifies the poetics of chaos as the narrative strategy and structural pattern of B. Hrabal's reminiscencesHarlekynovy miliony (1981).