The analysis of two works by Andrzej Bobkowski – the short story Pożegnanie [Farewell] and the essay List [Letter] – problematizes the way the friendship between the narrator and the main character of the text is presented, assuming that the prototype of the protagonist is the writer Wilhelm Mach. The relationship between the men is described through the prism of urban space. The practices of looking and creating the image of a friend that are present in prose texts are carefully traced. The dispute over the communist system in Poland, which becomes the reason for the parting of friends, is interpreted here as an impossible conversation due to the social inequalities that exist between the debaters.

Keywords: Wilhelm Mach, Andrzej Bobkowski, prose of the 1940s, literature of the reckoning of the intelligentsia, dislocation, class inequality