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Shakespeare after the Cataclysm

Summary/Abstract: Olga Katafiasz reviews the Polish translation of W.H. Auden's Lectures on Shakespeare (Biblioteka Kwartalnika Kronos, Warsaw 2015). The author notes that the Shakespeare lectures contained in the book, delivered in the 1946/47 academic year, are a reconstruction by the writer's secretary. Katafiasz states that the book approaches Shakespeare's works less in terms of Shakespeare scholars' findings than through philosophy and literature, which create a dense and fascinating context for the plays discussed. The author covers the issues which Auden finds most important, such as the concept of the tragic in Shakespeare, marking the caesurae in his work, and the theme of forgiveness, found in almost every lecture. The quoted fragments of the book show how powerfully present the subject of World War II was in the lectures, which were first held only a year after the conflict's end.

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