Górnośląski krajobraz industrialny w tekstach kultury od końca XVIII wieku do początków XX wieku
The Upper Silesian Industrial Landscape in Texts of Culture from the End of the 18th Century to the Early 20th Century

Author(s): Izabela Kaczmarzyk
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Summary/Abstract: The article is devoted to various means of artistic conceptualisation of the transfigurations in the Upper Silesian cultural landscape that took place at the turn of the 20thcentury as a result of industrialisation. Characteristic features of literary descriptions of such a landscape are as follows: specialised vocabulary, metaphors connected to darkness, fire, billows of smoke, or staffage, which refers to traditional eschatological ideas, and emotional tone, which searches for linguistic means to “express the inexpressible.” In turn, typical features in painting are veristic technical details of buildings, and idyllic rural or night landscapes contrasted with images of manufacturing plants, which were modelled on the connotations with Pluto’s realm, visions of Final Judgement, or volcanos such as Etna or Mount Vesuvius. For the authors of literary descriptions and visual representations, an encounter with an industrial landscape constituted above all the experience of the sublime. Initially, the descriptions could be characterised by uncritical fascination with the changes, while in the second half of the 19th century, ambivalence in the evaluation of the transfigurations of the Upper Silesia began to grow.

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