We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
This text is an introduction to the problem discussed in the entire book. At the beginning,a literary diagnosis of contemporaneity has been made, which shows that modern individualsare not capable of discovering or discerning the sense of life or of any of their actions. In thefurther part, philosophical possibilities for deliberating about sense in its ontological, axiologicaland praxeological dimensions (not only the “common” — sensual ones that have been examinedso far) have been indicated. In the last part, a reference to art has been made, which concernsnot only exemplary literary and artistic works analysed in the book, but also the philosophy ofcreation and the questions that artists ask themselves with regard to the aim and the methodsof their activity.
More...
The author (who simultaneously is a painter) reflects on various aspects of the philosophy ofcreation. First, he pays attention to the capacity of the word “sense” — what it traditionally meant(relating mainly to sensual cognition), and which problems (suggested in the title) the contemporarypeople have to face. Referring to philosophical texts, the author of the article proves thatthe sense of art consists in going beyond the current existence and that it is always establishedin relation to the audience. It should be also remembered that the process of creation is alwayshazardous, just like life choices are, yet that this is the risk that a human being is bound to take.At the end of the article, the weak points of anti‑arthave been presented, the representatives ofwhich cravenly depreciate the value of the fundamental question: “Why?”
More...
The text presents deliberations of a painter on the individual aspect of a creative process.The author asks a provocative question whether everything that is presently created may beconsidered as art. At the obtained level of collective (or tribal) evolution, we have reached thestate of lack of balance between technological capacities and the development of individuality.According to the author, collective actions rarely bring sensible results. With noticeable concern,the author observes the contemporary plethora of images, chaos and haste, yet he concludesthat time is, and will be, the final verifier of values. He opts for the attitude that aims at savingindividual human dignity which may be found in the sense of responsibility and in the desire tosearch for truth. At the end of the article a question and a thesis are formulated, which regardthe conformity between ideological and artistic choices.
More...
The author presents a vast, and constantly developed artistic project of Maciej Linttner, whichthe title closet represents. It contains chests in which the artifacts collected, transformed and createdby the artist (including literary works) are being stored. The author of the article pays specialattention to the communicative aspects. On the one hand, in Linttner’s work she discerns theconception of a weak subject — a nomadic subject thrown into the postmodern grid without anyhierarchy, but on the other hand, she sees the necessity of the creative contribution the recipientshave to make to compile the selected senses for their own use. Linttner experiments, persistentlytrying to identify himself. Simultaneously, the artist believes in the universal character of theconveyed message and, aware of the risk, he submits to the verifying power of time.
More...
The article illustrates the proximity of artistic attitudes of Jan Józef Szczepański, a writer,and Tadeusz Brzozowski, a painter. It presents the history of a deep and long‑lastingfriendshipbetween these two artists. On the basis of literary creations and diary entries of Jan JózefSzczepański, it attempts to reconstruct the ethical attitudes and artistic choices declared andadopted by both artists. Indicating a number of differences between them, the article aims atpresenting the essence of artistic activity which they both represented and which has its sourcein the indissoluble connection between ethics and aesthetics.
More...
Conrad answers Stein’s question — “How to be”? — ever anew. He repeats that moral normsare always valid, regardless of the circumstances or some greater necessity. Owing to that attitude,Conrad became a moral guide to young Poles during the war, occupation and the time of theCommunist regime. Also today, the Conradian ethos makes it possible to preserve “faithfulnessto something significantly moral and valuable.” Conrad regards the Mediterranean tradition to bethe source of European culture and civilisation and the foundation, without which nothing couldbe achieved either in the spiritual or the material sphere. It is this particular tradition that formedConrad’s views and allowed him, in turn, to form the views of the consecutive generations ofreaders (which he still continues to do).
More...
The works of Joseph Conrad (and, more specifically, their Polish translations) were frequentlyused in political debates. Many critics read their own contents into his works, and used Conradas an exemplum illustrating arguments they had advanced. This article is an analysis of the manipulationswhich Conrad’s works were subjected to in Poland. The analysis has been conductedwith the use of terminology applied in the descriptive studies on translation. In the article, theauthor focuses on the distortions of Conrad’s translated works, which resulted from the continuousinfluences of various ideologies. To this end, terms such as: re‑writing,refraction and patronage,introduced into translation studies by André Lefevere, have been used.
More...
The article presents a distinguished historian and literary critic, Kazimierz Wyka, not only asa philosopher of history, but also in a new role of an expert in military craft. A careful readingof Wyka’s essays allowed the author to reconstruct the evolution of the critic’s views (as he wasengaged in the aspects of military system not only during the war, but he recalled this theme duringthe following anniversaries) concerning the causes of the Polish defeat in September 1939. Wykaanalysed the military, economic, propagandist, political and social issues. As a literary scholar, hewas also interested in these problems being discussed — unfortunately, not thoroughly enough —by writers. Subjectively, he emphasised Polish moral claims that determined the fundemental senseof the “Polish September”.
More...
The article is devoted to the analysis of literary texts and diary entries of J.J. Szczepański,in the context of the broadly understood problem of home. The writer presents home (in variousmoments of his life) as an archetypal place of rooting, as an asylum, a haven — a place of departuresand returns. The author of the article recalls data concerning autobiographical characterof Szczepański’s writing, and she draws the readers’ attention to the fact that his observationscorrespond to the fundamental theses of the oikological reflection.
More...
The artistic activity of people suffering from schizophrenia is the main theme of the presentarticle, whereas its most important aim is to formulate a hypothesis which would provide ananswer to the significant research question: Can the pieces created during the state of psychosisbe regarded as works of art or are they only a form of substitute activity to the patient (in whichcase they should be analysed exclusively in terms of a clinical diagnosis). Many researchersrepresenting biological psychiatry opt for considering schizophrenic art as a projection of distor-tions, created in the course of mental processes that take place in the schizophrenic’s mind. Thehumanities represent a different attitude, regarding mental illness as an artificial product createdby the society. Both points of view seem to be incomplete. Therefore, the discussion concerningthe art of people affected by psychosis focuses on adopting a more moderate perspective, sug-gested by Karl Jaspers, who first acknowledged the analysis of artistic pieces created by peoplewith mental disorders as a supplementary method of examination of mental processes takingplace in the minds of patients suffering from schizophrenia. Working with schizophrenics, just asanalysing their plastic artworks, requires adopting a different perspective than the one typicallyadopted in case of healthy people. The analysis of art created by the mentally ill may be a formof examination of their internal experiences, being simultaneously a clinical diagnosis and animportant stage in the therapeutic process.
More...
In November 2013, in the Gallery of the Association of Polish Photographers from the Sile-sian District in Katowice, an exhibition entitled Urban Legends took place. During the exhibitionthe artistic works of students of the Academy of Fine Arts were displayed. It is no coincidencethat the Department of Literary Interpretation and the Department of Interdisciplinary Studiesengaged themselves in the examination of urban legends. The installations presented on the ex-hibition were often interconnected with verbal elements, as if to emphasise the source and therelation to the oral origins of legends, rumours and incredible stories… It turned out that urbanlegends may be understood broadly, interpreted in many different ways and translated into theartistic language. As Dionizjusz Czubala, cited in the exhibition brochure, emphasised (and theexhibition itself confirmed): “the new system of thinking [a realistic one, based on facts andcause-and-effect logic — author’s annotation] has not resulted in the elimination of the need forcreating myths from our lives”.
More...
The article is devoted to the analysis of a photograhic cycle entitled: Polish Diaspora andOther Stories, created by Allan Sekula, an American photograph of Polish origin. Recognisedas an artist-etnographer, and simultaneously, a critic of the late capitalism and globalism, in hisworks Sekula combines photographs with a linguistic text — titles (sometimes complex), com-ments, ambiguous allusions — obtaining a semantically rich message. From his “stories” aboutPolish-Amierican relations, an image of a postcolonial Poland emerges. The artist, who includesautobiographical material in his works, is also interested in the aspects of Polish-Jewish relations,as well as the issues connected with losing one’s national identity.
More...
In the article, the author discusses the artistic output of B.S. Johnson and he suggests that thewriter’s desire to confine his subjective experience to the work of art seems to be the commonelement of his novels. As a heir of Joycean and Beckettian literary traditions, Johnson declaresthat the only chance for literature — pushed to the margins of cultural communication by thecinema — is to present everything that is individual and unique; everything that is internalised inone’s personal experience. This claim for the explication of an individual thought in the pages ofa novel comes to the fore in “The Unfortunantes”. The form of separate pages placed in a box (anelement of liberature) is perceived here as a reflection of the random activeness of the mind andmemory. Simultaneously, it illustrates the described experience in its whole chaotic and incoherentform. Moreover, it allows the readers to reduce the distance which usually exists between themand the book, so that not only can they become its witnesses but also its confidants.
More...
In his artistic activity, Emil Cioran gradually deprives human life of tolerance. He perceivesthe fact of human existence as a scandalizing insult, an unfair joke, a tragic mistake of fate,incommesurate with the existence before the catastrophic moment of birth. The Romanian phi-losopher impairs the dense groundwork of being with his questions about the sense and purposeof existence. He weaves the texture of life with ever-multiplying question marks, which unex-pectedly peter away each time one tries to formulate any rational answer. His questioning ofthe sense of being a human perfectly correlates with the deliberations of such writers as: AnaїsNin, Virginia Woolf, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sándor Marái. Their ontologi-cal reflections, being ideologically proximate to Cioran’s own philosophy, create an extremelydelicate system of reference that allows one to comprehend the incidental nature of the earthlyroam of the embodied souls.
More...
Professor Mieczysław Porębski, a distinguished historian and art critic, is also the author ofZ. Po‑wieść [Z. Novel] (1989), in which he presented his original philosophy of history. Charactersin this book are trying to read the meanings contained in the “images” passed down by history,in order to be able to recognise the elements of their own identity in what is considered to bedistant past, with the use of their imagination, interpretation and empathy. In this article, theauthor is trying to illustrate, how this formally complicated prose is bonded together by meansof reflection on the ways of ordering one’s own biography and polyphonic history, as well ason learning one’s history and identity through narration. The aim of the article is to characterizethe vision of Porębski as a hermeneutic project which, drawing from various achievements ofpostmodernism, does not avoid questions about the condition of human being and the sense ofwhat happens to him/her
More...
vSearching for the Third Sense. About the Interference of Arts in the Works of Jarosław IwaszkiewiczIn the works of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz various forms of art (especially musical and visualarts) often co-exist. The interference of arts, in this case, is limited to the formal experiments(regarding eg. musicality of a poem, or lexical devices which serve the purpose of language visu-alisation), and it becomes a method of searching for the more profound sensations in visual arts,which results in discovering new senses through art. Adopting Roland Barthes’s terminology, thisprocess may be defined as an attempt to determine an open sense — the so called third sense.In case of Iwaszkiewicz’s works, most often this sense is of metaphysical nature.
More...