“American Vilnius”. On the Natural Passions of Tymoteusz Karpowicz Cover Image

„Amerykańskie Wilno”. O przyrodniczych zamiłowaniach Tymoteusza Karpowicza
“American Vilnius”. On the Natural Passions of Tymoteusz Karpowicz

Author(s): Magdalena Kokoszka
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Tymoteusz Karpowicz; Stanisław Bonifacy Jundziłł; garden; creative negation; sensuality

Summary/Abstract: The author of the article compares the writer‘s poetic and horticultural activity. She is interested in Vilnius heritage (especially that connected with Stanisław Bonifacy Jundziłł), which shaped the natural sensitivity of the poet, and the famed home garden at Oak Park (the suburbs of Chicago), or, as Ryszard Sawicki suggested, Karpowicz’s “American Wilno”. The author of the text asks about the discord between the consciously worked-out lack of sensuality of the poet‘s poems and the sensual richness of the gardener who describes his attitude to nature in interviews and letters. She also propounds the thesis that Karpowicz’s poetry can be interpreted as a conceptual escape from the garden and sensuality, from the imposing and never overstretched nature of nature, and from this perspective it may be viewed also as yet another form of Karpowicz’s “creative negation”. Karpowicz-creator breaks with referentiality embedded in a concrete, sensual experience; he shifts attention from what is found to what is potential. He does not seem to think back to the “place on Earth”; he rather actively creates its own “place in existence”. He creates it − like his “American Vilnius” – from scratch.

  • Issue Year: 2017
  • Issue No: 2 (10)
  • Page Range: 141-153
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Polish