Bitanga. Obrazek z życia Zagrzebia
Bitanga. A picture from the life of Zagreb

Author(s): Janko Polić Kamov
Contributor(s): Stanisław Rek (Translator)
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: modernism; 19th-20th century literature; Central Europe; culture; problems; literary criticism
Summary/Abstract: A collection of translations of literary texts of the modernist period in Central and Eastern Europe, illustrating various dimensions of shaping the modernity of the region and various aspects of forming the identity of the literary hero of that period. The volume fills the research gap related to the lack of publications on the problems of Central and Eastern European modernism in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The translations were provided with notes about the authors and indexes. The 3-volume publication is the result of a scientific project carried out under the National Program for the Development of the Humanities. The authors propose to identify the literature of Central and Eastern Europe in the years 1867–1918 as a whole, using a category important for cultural research, which today assigns special importance to the phenomenon of place. Reflecting on the literature of modernism in Central and Eastern Europe, the authors of the project want to show how writers and critics responded to the challenges of their time and how the dynamics of their explorations was shaped. This is related to the choice of the time frame 1867-1918. Both dates are connected with the most important political events for modern Central and Eastern Europe. This is the time of the birth of nationalisms, but also of the emergence of utopias that cross the borders of national particularisms. The perspective proposed in the publication (and its tools) are not theoretical - the authors are less interested in defining modernism as a theoretical construct than in dealing with the living matter of local responses to the experiences and artistic impulses of modernity. Their main desire was to bring local stories together with the mainstream modernist narrative: about change and breakup, about the chaos of life, about the search for subjectivity, about the fight against the dictates of oppressive forms of culture and language, about the construction of identity in the individual and collective dimensions.

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