Nie mam siły żyć
I Don’t Have the Strength to Live
Self-destruction in Culture
Contributor(s): Piotr Nowak (Editor), Halszka Witkowska (Editor)
Subject(s): History, Cultural history
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: suicide; suicide attempt; self-mutilation; self-destruction; psychology; culture studies; philosophy; suicidology
Summary/Abstract: The publication is a collection of essays, which address the problem of human self-destruction from many perspectives. It contains both the interpretations of literary works and the analyses of contemporary culture. The issues of suicide and human self-destruction are addressed by outstanding Polish humanists, who – looking at literary, film, biblical and mythological characters – not only ask how culture affects suicide, but also how the problem of human self-destruction affects culture.
- E-ISBN-13: 978-83-235-6332-7
- Print-ISBN-13: 978-83-235-6324-2
- Page Count: 258
- Publication Year: 2024
- Language: Polish
Samobójstwo i autodestrukcja w greckich opowieściach mitycznych
Samobójstwo i autodestrukcja w greckich opowieściach mitycznych
(Suicide and self-destruction in Greek mythical stories)
- Author(s):Tomasz Mojsik
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:17-31
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:suicide; Greek myths; ancient culture
- Summary/Abstract:The article analyzes selected scenes of suicide and other actions of a (self)destructive nature in Greek myths. The basis for the reading are the mythographic works of Apollodorus and Hyginus. In the conclusions the author draws attention to the significant presence of female suicide in myth, as well as the role of violence in the functioning of the heroic family.
- Price: 4.50 €
Chrześcijaństwo wobec samobójstwa
Chrześcijaństwo wobec samobójstwa
(Suicide from a Christian perspective)
- Author(s):Janusz Pyda OP
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Archaeology
- Page Range:32-46
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:suicide; suicidology; Christianity; Catholicism; Thomas Aquinas
- Summary/Abstract:This article is a presentation of Catholic moral doctrine in relation to the issue of suicide. Two main principles of the Catholic position are presented and discussed. Firstly, the belief in the inherent evil of every act of suicide. Secondly, the relativity of moral responsibility of a person making an unsuccessful or successful suicide attempt. Based on the texts of Thomas Aquinas, three main arguments for the inadmissibility of suicide are also presented: the argument from the law of nature, the argument from the community and the argument from the usurpation. These arguments are compared with non-Christian philosophical tradition regarding suicide (Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Camus).
- Price: 4.50 €
Judasz – zdrajca, samobójca czy człowiek potrzebujący miłosierdzia?
Judasz – zdrajca, samobójca czy człowiek potrzebujący miłosierdzia?
(Judas – a traitor, a suicide or a man in need of mercy?)
- Author(s):Przemysław Artemiuk
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:47-58
- No. of Pages:12
- Keywords:Judas; Gospels; Acts; Gospel of Judas; Amos Oz; Basilica of Vézelay
- Summary/Abstract:In the article, the author attempts to answer the question: who was Judas: a traitor, a suicide or a man in need of mercy? To this end, he uses the texts of the New Testament as well as ancient and modern interpretations to establish the facts. While the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are unambiguous in their presentation of Judas and see him as a traitor, a son of perdition and a man who betrayed his vocation, interpretations of this tragic figure eschew such categories. Judas appears in them as a man who, after his suicide, needs Jesus’ mercy. He is a key person in the process of Christ’s revelation, an apostle thanks to whom the mission of the Master from Nazareth is fulfilled, and finally a lost sheep. The multitude of interpretations of Judas proves that his story is still alive and it is difficult to unambiguously assess his deed.
- Price: 4.50 €
Romantyczna „choroba na śmierć”
Romantyczna „choroba na śmierć”
(Romantic “sickness unto death”)
- Author(s):Andrzej Fabianowski
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:61-80
- No. of Pages:20
- Keywords:suicide in Romanticism; logosphere; Johann Wolfgang Goethe; Heinrich von Kleist; Adam Mickiewicz; Juliusz Słowacki; Zygmunt Krasiński; Julian Ordon; Michał Czajkowski
- Summary/Abstract:Romanticism brought a previously unknown identification of the fate of a literary hero and a real human being. The phenomenon of suicide in the Romantic era must therefore take into account the suicide written into literary fiction and the real one. The reason for the young people’s suicide was a feeling of deep alienation, a split between the idealistic image of the world and its true form. The impossibility of fulfilling ideal love, political oppression, and finally the feeling of being lost most often pushed young desperate people into the arms of death. But older people also made suicide decisions. Most often, the source of this decision was the inability to realize one’s own existential project in a world where there was no room for individualism. The inability to express themselves, the end of the logosphere, was synonymous with their decision to commit suicide. Romantic suicide was not the end of life, it expressed hope for a transition to a better world, friendly to human feelings and truth.
- Price: 4.50 €
Suicydologia romantyczna
Suicydologia romantyczna
(Suicydologia romantyczna)
- Author(s):Piotr Nowak
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:81-94
- No. of Pages:14
- Keywords:Romanticism; suicide; metempsychosis; Adam Mickiewicz; Juliusz Słowacki
- Summary/Abstract:In Polish literature witches, vampires, mermaids and beings with a different ontological status from humans already appeared in Romanticism. Suicidal plots are present in the poem Ghoul ("Upiór"), which preceded Mickiewicz’s poetic drama Dziady, in the ballad "Świteź" (mass suicide), and in "Konrad Wallenrod". Słowacki viewed suicide differently, from his personal experience. His "Godzina myśli" is a metempsychosist poem dedicated to the suicide of his friend, Ludwik Spitznagel. Słowacki never came to terms with this death.
- Price: 4.50 €
Bolesława Micińskiego i Zygmunta Haupta rozważania o wojnie – szkic do portretu paralelnego
Bolesława Micińskiego i Zygmunta Haupta rozważania o wojnie – szkic do portretu paralelnego
(Bolesław Miciński’s and Zygmunt Haupt’s reflections on war – a sketch for a parallel portrait)
- Author(s):Paweł Panas
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:95-104
- No. of Pages:10
- Keywords:Boleslaw Micinski; Zygmunt Haupt; essays; exile; war
- Summary/Abstract:The article analyzes essays by Boleslaw Micinski in which reflections of war appear. Micinski reinterprets the Freudian way of thinking about war as a fundamental existential scandal. For the author of Journey to Hell, self-destructive (on many levels) war annihilation destroys the people and communities it affects and by which it was unleashed. However, at the same time it gives humankind the opportunity to make fundamental decision about humanity. The opportunity arises to choose a dignified life crowned with a true mysterium mortis. Zygmunt Haupt’s prose, in whose literary works this theme also comes into view, is the context for these analyses. In Haupt’s prose, war is primarily an experience of omnipresent death. Both Micinski and Haupt contemplate on how to deal with this stigma that marked them as 20th-century exiles.
- Price: 4.50 €
Smierdiakowa droga do samobójstwa – "Bracia Karamazow" Fiodora Dostojewskiego
Smierdiakowa droga do samobójstwa – "Bracia Karamazow" Fiodora Dostojewskiego
(The Smerdyakov’s road to suicide – "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky)
- Author(s):Mirosława Michalska-Suchanek
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:107-124
- No. of Pages:18
- Keywords:Smerdyakov; The Brothers Karamazov; Fyodor Dostoevsky; suicide
- Summary/Abstract:This article attempts to analyse the path to suicide of one of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s more important suicide heroes – Smerdyakov from the novel "The Brothers Karamazov". This path is understood as a combination of the protagonist’s background, his characterological and personal traits, as well as dynamically growing circumstances and conditions. All these factors, stretched over time, entailed the final solution, i.e. death by suicide. Underneath the mask of an ill-advised, simple-minded epileptic, hid a person who was intelligent, reasoning logically and, at the same time, clever and cynical. His developed self-consciousness became his enemy, causing his opposition to the world to evolve into a complete negation of it. Hatred and anger were – in his view – the antidote to offended pride. The stigma of his origins that haunted him gave rise to a desire to take revenge on those to whom fate had granted a better life. Humiliation and shame became a driving force that was impossible to tame. He was able and willing to use even his own suicidal death as a weapon against those he hated. Smerdyakov also proved to be the perfect soil in which to germinate the seeds of the ideology preached by Ivan Karamazov, who, proclaiming that in the absence of God there is no morality and everything is permitted, maneuvered Smerdyakov with a vision of absolute freedom, giving permission for arbitrariness. The hero, eager for revenge on the Karamazov family, succumbed to the idea (exploited it?), bringing Ivan’s extreme ethical rationalism ad absurdum.
- Price: 4.50 €
Stawrogin i Kiriłłow
Stawrogin i Kiriłłow
(Stavrogin and Kirillov)
- Author(s):Tomasz Herbich
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:125-137
- No. of Pages:13
- Keywords:suicide; revolution; indifference; freedom; pessimism; modernity
- Summary/Abstract:The attempt presented in this article to interpret the two suicides described in Dostoevsky’s "Demons", committed by Stavrogin and Kirillov, starts from the recognition that the novel in question can be read not only as a text that fits into the local context of the Nechayev and his followers’ case or points to the metaphysical foundations of revolution, but also as a commentary on the intellectual culture of nineteenth-century Europe. In this culture, in turn, two tendencies are discernible: the first is revolutionary and activist in nature, while the second is pessimistic, expressing itself in the pursuit as the highest form of freedom. I believe that the author of the Demons, by placing at the centre of the revolutionary world two protagonists that persist in immobility and end their lives in suicide, sought to integrate these two tendencies into a single image. Analysing the two suicides in question: the first, by Kirillov, who sees it as a path leading to the salvation of mankind, and the second, by Stavrogin, which is the end of the process of extinction of the will, I come to formulate a view according to which the extinction of the will could be considered as more permanently linked to the essence of modernity than striving and movement.
- Price: 4.50 €
Zmartwienie w San Junipero
Zmartwienie w San Junipero
(The chagrin of San Junipero)
- Author(s):Grzegorz Marzec
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:141-154
- No. of Pages:14
- Keywords:chagrin; deadness; undead; Bieńczyk; Balzac; science fiction; Black Mirror; San Junipero
- Summary/Abstract:The article, referring to the concept of “chagrin” (“zmartwienie”), as introduced by Marek Bieńczyk, suggests the application of this category to the topics presented in "San Junipero", one of the parts of Charlie Brooker’s "Black Mirror". The chagrin should be understood as deadness, the act of imitating the dead, being, like a zombie, half-dead. From this perspective, the article discusses the issue of destruction and self-destruction of digital specters that exist, mostly on the Internet and in electronic media, in a completely undead form.
- Price: 4.50 €
Autodestrukcja jako źródło przyjemności
Autodestrukcja jako źródło przyjemności
(Self-destruction as a source of pleasure)
- Author(s):Marek Kochan
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:155-165
- No. of Pages:11
- Keywords:self-destruction; violence; victim; The Piano Teacher by Jelinek; Crash by Cronenberg; Breaking the Waves by von Trier
- Summary/Abstract:The topic of this essay is self-destructive behaviour analysed as way to become a subject of one’s life and feel pleasure. The author begins with discussing concepts of violence and power, recalling Simone Weil’s essay about "The Iliad" ("The Iliad or the Poem of Force") and the examples taken from literature about German-Nazi death camps (the short stories by Tadeusz Borowski and the novel of Jerzy Fąfara, devoted to the story of Józef Szajna, the prisoner of the Auschwitz camp). The individual, forced by violence to become a victim, could regain the status of sovereign subject and control over one’s life by using violence to himself or herself. The three faces of the phenomenon of self-destruction are discussed in the text: control, pleasure and offering. The author describes them with the reference to the novel of Elfriede Jelinek "The Piano Teacher" (control), the film "Crash" by David Cronenberg (pleasure) and the film "Breaking the Waves" by Lars von Trier (offering). The three concepts of self-destruction have a lot in common, as they lead to the same situation, when the individual regains sovereignty. As Martin Heidegger says ("Being and Time"), the death is something most private for human beings. Being-toward-death leads the individuals to recognize their own nature and to search different pleasures of life. Self-destruction could be one of them, sometimes bringing the pleasure and death at the same time.
- Price: 4.50 €
Autodestrukcja i jej losy
Autodestrukcja i jej losy
(Self-destruction and its vicissitudes)
- Author(s):Paweł Dybel
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:169-188
- No. of Pages:20
- Keywords:self-destruction; suicide; depression; Eros; Thanatos; prohibition; culture; global warming; artificial intelligence; Internet; hate
- Summary/Abstract:I approach the phenomenon of self-destruction from two perspectives, individual and collective. Within the framework of the first perspective, I characterize two types of its manifestation in the form of suicidal tendencies of the individual. The first type are the impulses through which these tendencies make themselves known in life situations. The second type is the individual’s readiness to commit suicide consciously, usually occurring on the basis of depressive states (calculated suicide) and ritual suicide. In the collective perspective, I consider self-destructive tendencies in relation to the late version of Freud’s theory of drives based on the opposition of Eros and Thanatos. I point out that these tendencies are linked to Thanatos, despite the fact that man tries to repress them into the unconscious by means of prohibitions, constitute a permanent threat to human culture. This threat has increased in modern culture due to such phenomena as the accumulation of powerful arsenals of nuclear weapons by the world’ military powers, increasing global warming, the use of artificial intelligence technology in various areas of social life, the emergence of new forms of aggressive behaviour (hate) on the Internet. All these phenomena contain powerful destructive and self-destructive potential. Being synonymous with progress, they can become the harbingers of the decline and the end of human civilisation.
- Price: 4.50 €
"Chlew" albo wybór Juliana
"Chlew" albo wybór Juliana
("Pigsty" or Julian’s choice)
- Author(s):Szymon Wróbel
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:189-205
- No. of Pages:17
- Keywords:drive; desire; truth; compulsion; self-knowledge; freedom; choice
- Summary/Abstract:The text is an attempt to think through the famous film and play by Pier Paolo Pasolini entitled The Pigsty. The author focuses mainly on the mystery of Julian and his desires. Julian is neither a rebel nor a conformist, neither a revolutionary nor a reactionary. Julian is a refugee from the bourgeois world in search of other love objects that are not culturally defined and expected. The concepts of desire and drive are considered in the text in a philosophical and psychoanalytic context, thanks to references to concepts proposed by Spinoza, Freud and Lacan. The author of the text also tries to think through Julian’s subjective structure, comparing it to the subjective structure of Hamlet. Finally, conclusions are drawn about freedom and coercion in choosing the object of desire.
- Price: 4.50 €
Rola twórców kultury popularnej w działaniach na rzecz zapobiegania zachowaniom samobójczym wśród dzieci i młodzieży
Rola twórców kultury popularnej w działaniach na rzecz zapobiegania zachowaniom samobójczym wśród dzieci i młodzieży
(The role of popular culture creators in activities aimed at preventing suicidal behavior among children and adolescents)
- Author(s):Halszka Witkowska
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:209-219
- No. of Pages:11
- Keywords:suicidal behavior; popular culture; Werther effect; Papageno effect; teenagers; suicide prevention
- Summary/Abstract:The article concerns the influence of popular culture on suicidal behavior. It focuses on the issues of the Werther effect and the Papageno effect. The author indicates that a serious factor that may cause the Werther effect is the glorification and romanticization of suicide in works of culture. What deserves special attention is the wide reach of popular culture among young people, who are extremely vulnerable to suicidal behavior and susceptible to the influence of imitations. The main thesis of the article is the need to involve the creative culture community in activities aimed at preventing suicidal behavior.
- Price: 4.50 €
O potrzebie edukacji społeczeństwa w zakresie wiedzy suicydologicznej
O potrzebie edukacji społeczeństwa w zakresie wiedzy suicydologicznej
(On the need to educate the society in the field of suicidology knowledge)
- Author(s):Adam Czabański
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:220-234
- No. of Pages:15
- Keywords:suicide; suicide attempt; education; society
- Summary/Abstract:In 2019–2022, the number of suicides in Poland stabilized, but there was a large increase in the number of suicides and suicide attempts among children and adolescents up to 18 years of age. Therefore, there is a need to disseminate knowledge in the field of suicidology in Poland, especially knowledge on recognizing signs of risk of suicidal behavior and knowledge on suicide prevention, including crisis intervention. Among Polish experts in the field of suicidology, there is a conviction about the need to introduce the subject “Suicidology” in the curricula of selected fields of study. This applies especially to such fields as Pedagogy, Psychology, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Journalism, but also many others. The activities of experts working on the Suicide Behavior Prevention Program for 2021–2025 give hope, which provides for training of individual professional groups in the field of suicidology knowledge.
- Price: 4.50 €
Dobry moment na zakończenie
Dobry moment na zakończenie
(Good time to finish)
- Author(s):Piotr Nowak
- Language:Polish
- Subject(s):Cultural history
- Page Range:237-247
- No. of Pages:11
- Keywords:suicide; euthanasia; dignity
- Summary/Abstract:With life it is so – little do we remember it, and yet we always regret when we have to leave it. According to Plato, suicide is not a solution as we reject the very gift of existence, which must not be lost. What is more, after his death, a suicide almost immediately begins a new life. Jean Amèry, close in his views to existentialism, looks at this issue differently and advocates the right to voluntary death and the recognition of each failure as its justification. This stance is part of the proper discourse on suicide and euthanasia, which Henryk Elzenberg wrote about in this context. His arguments lead to the conclusion that both suicide and euthanasia are the broadest confirmation of human dignity, which consists in freeing oneself from a biological survival instinct. However, it should be recalled that no one should be encouraged to euthanasia and even more so, argue for its adoption.
- Price: 4.50 €
