Wiersze na wolności, wieszcz na wolności. O poezji Miłosza Biedrzyckiego

Author(s): Błażej Zarzecki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 11/2020

The article analyses the poetry of Miłosz Biedrzycki (MLB) as being built on the opposition to politically engaged authors from the 80s. In his case, defending the autonomy of literature does not lead to self-centred, private, authoritative, and confident narration. Biedrzycki’s lyrical subject is constantly in movement, unmasks his own activity, and proposes a vision of an open and modest identity which is fed by experience of the Other, and not constructed on the basis of common, heroical myths unable to recognise any failures.

„De la fereastra unui etaj această arie de Mozart” sau poezia lui Stanisław Barańczak între muzică şi politică

Author(s): Joanna Dembińska-Pawelec / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2019

The sketch presents an interpretation of Stanisław Barańczak poem Z okna na którymś piętrze ta aria Mozarta. It was translated into Romanian by Constantin Geambaşu and bears the title De la fereastra unui etaj această arie de Mozart. In the poem there is a quotation from the Cherubino’s aria from the 1st act of Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro. Barańczak was a translator of an opera libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. The author of the sketch evokes the historical and political circumstances accompanying the spectacles of the comedy Beaumarchais, on the basis of which the libretto of the Mozart opera was created. In this context, she reads the Barańczak's poem pointing to the irremovable relationship of History and Art. A quote from Cherubino's aria allows us to see the gesture of the poet, who emphasizes the primacy of love in life and in Art.

Прикордоння як територія порозуміння/діалогу чи ворожості/конфлікту в українській рецепції польської літератури другої пол. XX – поч. XXI ст.

Author(s): Olesya Nakhlik / Language(s): Ukrainian Issue: 2/2019

The article analyzes the Ukrainian reception of reports by P. Smoleński "Funeral of the Cutthroat" and W. Szabłowski "Machine Guns and Cherries. Stories of Good People from Volyn" as texts which are provoking the reinterpreting of the causes/consequences of the traumatic historical experience of the two nations, form a different perspective of the perception of the tragic events of the mid-twentieth century, lead to dialogue and intensify the discussions of Ukrainians and Poles to find new formats of mutual understanding. Author has interpreted and convincingly proved the important role of non-fiction literature in the creation of a public resonance of complex historical problems, which leads to a reinterpretation of the causes/consequences of the traumatic historical experience of two nations and causes renewal of the conversations over the Ukrainian-Polish borderland as a zone of acceptance of Other or potential conflicts.

Krystyna Jaworska. Dalla deportazione all’esilio. Percorsi nella letteratura polacca della Seconda guerra mondiale

Author(s): Laura Quercioli Mincer / Language(s): Italian Issue: 11/2020

Paweł Graf, Automobil w pędzie. Studia o futuryzmie i futurystach

Author(s): Emiliano Ranocchi / Language(s): Italian Issue: 11/2020

Język potrzebuje snów

Author(s): Wojciech Bonowicz,Wiesław Myśliwski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 785/2020

Myśliwski wizyjny

Author(s): Tomasz Bocheński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 785/2020

Się śni

Author(s): Małgorzata Szczurek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 785/2020

Światy Myśliwskiego

Author(s): Klaudyna Schubert / Language(s): Polish Issue: 785/2020

Okiem artystów. Ankieta

Author(s): Jerzy Radziwiłowicz,Wioletta Grzegorzewska ,Stanisław Baj,Bill Johnston / Language(s): Polish Issue: 785/2020

Niebo już nie płonie

Author(s): Tadeusz Zatorski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 786/2020

O sąsiedzkim ludobójstwie na terenach narodowościowo i etnicznie mieszanych – jeden wątek pewnego opowiadania

Author(s): Hanna Gosk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 6/2020

The article is a personal reflection upon the themes of the past and the present, prompted by the author’s visceral reaction to a text entitled Babka Druga [The Second Grandma] by Tamara Bołdak-Janowska. Coming into contact with a single, concise short story is here translated into an essay testifying to an individual experience the author has gone through, an experience of the kind mentioned by Francis Fukuyama in his considerations regarding human identity. Simultaneously, the author utilises in her investigations the poetics of experience, private world, and their literary depictions, observations based on the notion of individual experience moulded by classically understood modernity. Her aim is most of all indicating those (thematic and formal) aspects of the unconventional piece of writing by Bołdak-Janowska that refer to ramifications for one’s experience and personal identity stemming from the process of introducing into (almost pre-modern) social reality rational projects of the said reality’s development (especially including such drastic ones as those related to the Second World War).

Władisław Reymont’s Fascination With Occultism: Biographical and Artistic Threads

Author(s): Karolina Maria Hess / Language(s): English Issue: 171/2020

Władysław Reymont (1867–1925) won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1924; praised for his unique insight into peasants’ life, realism and positivistic vibe, he is rarely considered an author interested in esoteric currents. A period of his travel as a medium, his attendance at the congress of The Theosophical Society in England, were marginalized and shown as unimportant events during his troubled life. The analysis of the author’s own statements, and tracing esoteric-related motifs in his works, show that Reymont’s own views of his works, and esotericism itself, were quite different. It is not the first time that the biography and intentions of the author tell a different story than contemporary textbooks. The paper traces Reymont’s fascinations in Eastern thought, Theosophical current, and Spiritualistic experiments, which were reflected in his works.

Postscriptum do biografii równoległych Schulza i Gombrowicza

Author(s): Tymoteusz Skiba / Language(s): Polish Issue: 16/2020

Pensjonaty pamięci, odłamki wspomnień

Author(s): Joanna Kisiel,Monika Ładoń / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2020

Wspólnota a narratywizacja. Próba krytyki konstruktywizmu Haydena White’a

Author(s): Stanisław Chankowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2020

In the essay “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality”, Hayden White, considering the epistemological status of historical narrative, distinguishes between the annual, the chronicle, and other, more explicitly historical types of writing. He indicates that the condition for the latter is the emergence of a social entity that can occupy both subjective and objective modes of history (both of these aspects being contained within the German word Geschichte). Such an entity, assuming responsibility for its own history, is authorized to narrate the events of its own existence. White believes that this narration takes on one of the forms of presentation available within the culture in question. This paper calls into question White’s constructivist thesis, drawing attention to trauma as a key aspect of the formation of narrative as such. Trauma is a “blind spot” around which narrative arises, with the trauma itself unable to be narrativized. Trauma dates from the prehistory of the subject (individual or collective) and reminds us that, although the trauma may seem to be an isolated phenomenon, it has a cause outside itself. The article supplements this criticism with a commentary on Man of Iron, a film depicting the striving of a society for autonomy in the telling of their own stories; these narratives are characterized by a certain excess indicative of the magnitude of the trauma.

Post‑monumentalne miejsca pamięci jako aktywne narzędzia doświadczenia (post)holocaustowego i (post)pamięci

Author(s): Kinga Anna Gajda / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2020

The aim of the article is to answer to the question of how best to commemorate the Holocaust in the post-memory era. One possible answer is to create temporary post-monuments which require engagement only from viewers who want and need it. The post-monument relates to cultural, social, and also individual memory. It commemorates forgotten places and individual experiences, encouraging dialogue among viewers. Engaging viewers and inviting them to reconstruct history is one way that the trauma of past generations can be commemorated by contemporary generations. In order for history to remain vibrant, and its message to have a performative function, its memory must live on through successive generations. The temporary nature of the post-monument allows it not only to commemorate, but also to thematize the process of memory erasure over time. In the article, the above observations are presented in reference to the theory of memory, the philosophy of postmodernism, the idea of homo holocaustus, in order to compare the post-monument to more traditional forms of commemoration alongside selected examples of post-monuments.

Skrzynie i kukła psa w Gepardzie Giuseppe Tomasiego di Lampedusy O życiu pośród resztek słów i rzeczy

Author(s): Ireneusz Gielata / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2020

This article is an attempt to interpret the final scene of The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (in which Concetta buries the remains of a decomposing stuffed dog) and to present an analysis of the motif of hope chests. Tracing Freudian anachronisms in the novel’s narration, the author proves that Concetta’s never-opened hope chests are a sign of her “mummified” memories of erotic unfulfillment. The decayed dowry kept in the chests is an image of “memory traces” (Freud) which harm the unmarried woman, turning her life into a “hell of memories.”

Kim jestem Bohumila Hrabala, czyli pytanie o tożsamość w samym sercu Europy

Author(s): Magdalena Brodacka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2020

The article Bohumil Hrabal’s “Who I Am,” or the Question of Identity in the Very Heart of Europe, is an attempt to place Hrabal’s work in the autobiographical current of his prose. At the same time, it is a deconstruction of the writer’s biographical legend by renaming and defining the linguistic procedures and metaphors used by the writer. The main subject matter of the article revolves around the problem of melancholy, the causes of which lie in the writer’s experiences and personality, as well as in the external socio-political context characteristic of Central Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. The entire discussion is illuminated by the philosophy of Karl Jaspers.

Poeci i ich zwierzęta

Author(s): Andrzej Juchniewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2020

Anita Jarzyna’s essays, collected in the book Post-koiné. Studia o nieantropocentrycznych językach (poetyckich) (Post-Koiné. Studies on Non-Anthropocentric (Poetic) Languages), contribute to the flourishing field of animal studies. Her work develops a coherent theory of the reading of poetry sing the latest methodologies. Jarzyna’s main argument, developed through a microscopic analysis of the the poems of several dozen poets, is for the necessity of the intentional reconfiguration of well-worn expressions and the re-evaluation of tropes. The reason for this is, as Donna Haraway argues, that such linguistic constructions and tropes are the reason the language “deviates from the correct path and takes a turn”. This remark applies not only to the works of Joanna Mueller and Justyna Bargielska, which intercept and neutralise derogatory language related to hunting (pomiot, pokot), but also to poets deconstructing oxymorons functioning in the Polish language (as in the case of Ryszard Krynicki), as well as allusively referring to canonical formulas (Adorno) which are of importance in the period (for example, in the poems of The Lives of Birds and Mammals, Kronhold). This is not the only strategy Jarzyna decides to pursue. She also outlines a complementary account of the animal biography (for example, Laika the dog, one of the first animals in space), the publicizing of which is part of Éric Baratay’s project of extending human history to non-human actors. The French historian postulates that the animal cannot remain a blank spot in history; a methodology for reading documents and testimonies must be developed in order to allow the reconstruction of the life path of animals. In the light of new research, the agency of animals is unquestionable, a narrative that Jarzyna also builds upon. This project criticizes many stereotypes and announces the development of a new way of speaking and thinking about writing. The first step in revising the old order is to revolutionize language by purifying it of animal-related curse words and other linguistic constructions that harm animals. In the eyes of this reviewer, Jarzyna’s monograph stands out from other publications in terms of the construction of the argument and its central premises, which go beyond the cautious style of many academic books.