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Based nearly exclusively on Tymon Terlecki’s home archive (letters, notebooks, press releases and other forgotten texts), the article is an attempt to reconstruct the literary evenings organized by the Polish Society of Academics in Chicago in 1964—1978, initiated by Terlecki. Thanks to the initiative and organizational effort of the Polish Society of Academics, the Polish community could meet various artists of multiple talents. During the inauguration of the academic year, writers and academics delivered speeches, among them: Danuta Mostwin and Florian Śmieja. Poetic evenings were held for Beata Obertyńska or Czesław Miłosz. From among the writers residing in America, the following presented their works during the literary evenings: Rόża Nowotarska, Bohdan Pawłowicz and Zbigniew Chałko, whereas Zofia Romanowiczowa came from Europe especially to participate. Among national artists presenting their literary works one could mention: Zbigniew Bieńkowski and Małgorzata Hillar, Jan Jόzef Szczepański, Artur Międzyrzecki and Julia Hartwig (winners of the scholarship offered by the University of Iowa) as well as Maria Dłuska and Tymoteusz Karpowicz. Special attention was given to theatre artists: Elżbieta Dziewońska-Krzemieńska, Mieczysława Ćwiklińska, Elżbieta Barszczewska and Łukasz Łukaszewicz. The successof these meetings was largely due to the active participation of the members of the Legionof Young Polish Women, the sponsors of the Chair of Polish Literature at the University of Chicago.
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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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The article endeavours to characterise the means of creation of the world and thefigure of a person with a disability in Polish and foreign texts from the period of YoungPoland to the contemporary times. Chosen literary works representing various tendenciesand genres from, among others, children’s literature, non‑fiction, but also fairy tales, form the ground for the author’s observations. The article reflects upon the means of hiding disabled people behind certain metaphors, as these people evoke extreme emotions, from fear to full acceptance. It focuses on the ways of representing the relations between a person and a society, oscillating around hostility and cooperation, in the context of otherness. The author also contemplates upon the notions of norm and normality, the issues connected to freedom, self‑determination, and having one’s own place in the world. Finally, remarks on the ways of domesticating otherness in literature are provided.
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Czarny Ląd. Warszawa [The Black Land. Warsaw] is a collection of reportages byWanda Melcer, institutionally and ideologically linked to Wiadomości Literackie weekly, and deeply involved in the social campaigns held under the auspices of Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński. Explicitly ideologised, these accounts of the journeys to the “black lands” – Warsaw’s district inhabited by the traditional Jewish people and nearby shtetls – aroused a number of controversies in the last years of interwar Poland. The aim of this article is to show the means of exoticising this community that are undertaken by the writer, taking into consideration the tradition and realised cultural scripts.
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The author of this article reflects upon the ways of creation of the world in Polishrural prose, which enforce bodily activity on the narrators and characters. What is analysed is the relation between everyday agricultural handwork – organising the plot of the pieces – and its preservation in the narration. The description includes the structures that make it possible for the writers to interlace the work of hands with the work of language when weaving the action, the events, and the story. The author also makes remarks on the axiological character of handcraft, fist fight, and the motif of a hand as inherent elements involved in the world creation that define rural prose, with a special emphasis on the works by Stanisław Czernik, Tadeusz Nowak, and Wiesław Myśliwski.
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This paper is devoted to familiarisation of the reality depicted in Jarosław Grzędowicz’s novel, entitled Pan Lodowego Ogrodu (The Lord of the Ice Garden). Particularly, it covers the means of dealing with the unknown, basing on the example of the protagonist of this cycle – Vuko Drakkainen. The first problem tackled in this paper is the way in which the aforementioned hero and narrator describes the world; precisely, it includesthe attempts to make the new and hostile reality familiar, and the consequences of such an act. The second issue is a change in the viewpoint of the protagonist throughout the saga, and its influence on his ways of defining the surrounding world. Hence, it becomes possible to track how an unaware and hostile coloniser turns into a nearly fully assimilated member of the community, which previously has been unknown to him.
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The purpose of this paper is to take a closer yet temporally distant look into the issues connected with the complexity of literary communication in the Polish prose of the 90s. It covers techniques, methods, and means which aim at constructing the relations between an addresser and an addressee with regard to changing historical conditions. The paper poses as its subject matter Polish prose of the 90s, that is – works by Marek Bieńczyk, Zbigniew Kruszyński, Jerzy Pilch, Zyta Rudzka, and, especially, Grzegorz Strumyk. Moreover, it focuses on the revisions of the traditionally understood fictionality, which has always been a cornerstone of the contract with an addressee and a guarantee of readerly success. The key question raised in this paper thus becomes “What instead of a plot?,” or, in other words, “Which fictionality?” The paper therefore deals with the issues rooted in poetics and literary theory in the context of the particular literary notions concerning fiction. Furthermore, the reflections on mimesis in relation to the contemporary methods of creating a plot are presented.
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The article presents the works by Wojciech Widłak – one of the most popular contemporary authors of children’s literature – in the context of the motifs of the homely andthe foreign present therein. The conducted analysis has shown that in Widłak’s pieces the motifs related to foreignness dominate in terms of both quantity and quality (as they connote more meanings). The “foreign” can function as a synonym for something unknown, dangerous, unwanted, inappropriate, distant, primordial, and instinctual. The author attempts to form the plot and action in such a way that this “foreignness,” with its negative implications, is challenged by the end of the work. As a result of such “domestication,” it becomes something known and thus homely. At times an unknown feeling or object becomes so intriguing that it encourages the characters – and readers – to explore it and to gain knowledge on the subject. The article also describes the way in which Widłak uses the so‑called defence mechanism, which makes it possible for the reader to concretise and get familiarised with the dangers, and, consequently, to domesticate them, restoring the feeling of safety. In turn, the motif of homeliness in Wojciech Widłak’s oeuvre is related to that which is desired, known, and safe. Also the literary devices utilised by the author make it easier for young readers to understand the actions of the characters and the laws in force in the depicted world, they lend colour to the narration, and they make the described reality coherent and harmonious. In such a way, the world from Wojciech Widłak’s short stories is safe and homely, while the situations in which the author places his characters activate non‑adultreaders to take various actions and gain new experiences.
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In his diary kept from 1963 to his death, Józef Pilch (1913–1995) – a bibliophile and historian of the region from Ustroń – shows not only the social and artistic life of Cieszyn Silesia, and the reality of the Polish People’s Republic, but also the extraordinary image of his home in a hamlet called Goje. The article attempts to examine his writings in terms of the means of creating the “spirit” of this place, which was significant for the author as both his own private haven built not without difficulty at this picturesque site, and an anchor of the most precious values. As regards the latter, their vehicle is mainly the library, but also discussions with friends – among others from the world of culture – about Poland, books, history, and contemporariness. In this article, it is shown in what way Goje becomes in Pilch’s Dziennik not only an oasis of kindness and hospitality, but also a mythical locus amoenus, and, at the same time, the quintessence of Cieszyn Silesia and the centre of Polishness: a new Soplicowo. The author of this paper ponders upon whether it is only the idealisation that blurs the general uprooting, or the diarist remains an uncritical mythographer, but also upon the purpose of such a representation of Goje. It turns out that this Arcadia of books and nature makes it possible for the hosts and their guests to reclaim their past and to maintain the continuity despite the decline of tradition, the historical politics of the Polish People’s Republic, and the situations on the border.
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The article is grounded upon three texts: Marzenia i tajemnice by Danuta Wałęsa, Między nami by Małgorzata Tusk, and Towarzyszka panienka by Monika Jaruzelska. It reflects upon the genre studies oriented and rhetorical character of these texts, and a sui generis referential pact – a combination of autobiographism and biographism. The author also delineates persuasive elements – that is, an aim and a type of persuasion – connected to the subject of one’s own or someone else’s biography. The final part of the paper includes the remarks on the relation between authorship / co‑authorship (written autonomously, edited by…, inspired by…) and the final form of the text.
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The aim of this article is to compare the means of creation of fantastic worlds in the works by Jelena Dołgopiat and Anna Starobiniec. Both writers are apparently characterized by similar perceptions of the problems of a contemporary human being, which can be seen in analogical spatial‑temporal constructions of their pieces.The starting point for both Dołgopiat and Starobiniec is the reality familiar to the reader, in which, however, a certain extraordinary displacement or intrusion of foreign forces takes place. Anna Starobiniec – whose oeuvre is placed by critics on the verge of fantasy and metaphysical thriller – derives from the legacy of the 19th century fantasy, yet she adds a modern touch to it. Classifying Jelena Dołgopiat’s work causes more difficulty. The most adequate term to characterise her short stories seems to be ultra fiction; still, it does not embrace the complexity of these works.
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This article analyses one of the most important short stories by the prominent Kyrgyz author, Chinghiz Aitmatov, entitled Spotted Dog Running on Seashore. The predominant issue tackled in this paper is the rite of passage of the protagonist, which covers the participation of the eleven‑year‑old boy in his first hunting at the sea, along with other huntsmen of his lineage. Adopting the definition of initiation formulated by Mircea Eliade, who has expanded Arnold van Gennep’s findings, the paper presents an internal change of the protagonist, which takes place as an outcome both of experiencing sacrum (among others, by means of witnessing death), and of knowledge gained during the dramatic events at the sea. Approaching the aforementioned issue allows one to relate Aitmatov’s short story to contemporaneity. After all, it is possible to perceive the boy’s initial attitude as the behaviour of the contemporary human being: an egoistic individual who suffers from the inability of defining his or her place in the world or the purpose of his or her life. By means of overcoming these limitations, the protagonist makes his existence mature. His mature way of being in the world might be claimed to be the sui generis universal postulate made by Aitmatov; precisely, it should be understood first and foremost as accepting the primacy of interpersonal solidarity and the value which belonging to a community – family or lineage – holds. Yet another indicator of the maturity resurfaces in the manner in which the protagonist feels his own connection with the surrounding nature, and believes in its protective power, as it is revealed at the end of the short story.
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The article presents a way of using two opposing words – war and peace – in LesyaUkrainka’s letters. What is worth noting is the fact that so far there has been no linguistic research concerning this issue. It has been observed that lexemes war and peace influence the shaping of the inner world of the author of the letters. The analysed epistolary texts contain binary oppositions (including the war / peace pair), which first and foremost mirror the values held by the author, expressed in moral maxims and aphorisms.The nominative form of the word war is verbalised primarily by means of such lexemes as war, army, military, martial. What is worth noting is the personal engagement of the author in the real descriptions of the days during the war, as well as the usage of aphorisms and reflections on the subject of the war. In the letters, the stereotypical phrase go to war recurs in its figurative meaning (for instance, war as an illness). Lesya Ukrainka uses numerous words deriving from the word peace: they calmed down, she/he made peace, to reconcile, it is (not) beseeming, peacefulness, peaceful, peacefully, faithful, Myrophora. Frequently, the lexeme agree appears with the following meaning: to reach an agreement, to agree with other people’s opinion. Studying the binary pair of war – peace confirms the multidimensionality and universality of these phenomena, and the words and phrases that describe them.
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The purpose of this study is to identify and highlight parallelisms between short stories by Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) and Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835–1921). An extraordinary prolific author, praised by Emily Dickinson, Rose Terry Cooke, and Henry James, Spofford can be seen as one of the “mothers” of American detective fiction (“In a Cellar,” “Mr. Furbush,” “In the Maguerriwock” recall Poe’s tales of ratiocination), and a skilled writer of both adventure and gothic stories. A long life, a successful career, and a happy marriage make Spofford’s personal history radically different from Poe’s tormented existence, undermined by alcohol abuse, loneliness, and poverty. Nevertheless, it is not unusual to find in Spofford’s works several themes that are recurrent in Poe’s literary world: madness, demonic women, characters with a morbid sensitivity, and an egocentric and amoral personality. Both authors challenged the conventional genres of their time and anticipatedthe Freudian unravelling of deranged psyche. Yone, the protagonist of “The Amber Gods,” is a disturbing narrating voice emerging from the grave (echoing Poe’s theme of premature burial). From her room in a psychiatric asylum, the protagonist of “Her Story” tells of the vampire‑like woman that took away her husband’s love and led her to madness, the narratorthus providing the terribly rational description of a neurotic mind. In “In the Maguerriwock,” a female figure sits by the fireplace, maddened with her husband’s abuses and the horror of the dreadful awareness that “three men went down cellar, and only two came up”; the corpse of a peddler lies under the pavement of the cider‑cellar, recalling “The Tell‑Tale Heart” and“The Black Cat.” Whereas Poe dealt with madness in male characters, ascribing it to perverseness, “one of the indivisible primary faculties or sentiments which give direction to the character of Man” (1899: 170), Spofford explores what could be defined as “domestic madness.” The fireplace is the symbol of domestic peace and family happiness, traditionally linked with a female figure; however, Spofford’s heroines are “madwomen” in the eyes of society, breaking the boundaries of “normality” and “morality,” breaking the “angel of thehearth” imagery to get what they yearn for (love, power, independence). Some of them are “mad” because they are “different,” or they have been driven to madness by horror and grief. In a repressive and violent society, madness represents the woman’s reaction.
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When the undefeated samurai Miyamoto Musashi retreated to a cave in 1643 and wrote The Book of Five Rings, a manifesto on swordsmanship, strategy, and winning for his students and generations of samurai to come, he created one of the most perceptive and incisive texts on strategic thinking ever to come from Asia. Musashi gives timeless advice on defeating an adversary, throwing an opponent off-guard, creating confusion, and other techniques for overpowering an assailant that will resonate with both martial artists and everyone else interested in skillfully dealing with conflict. For Musashi, the way of the martial arts was a mastery of the mind rather than simply technical prowess—and it is this path to mastery that is the core teaching in The Book of Five Rings. Written not only for martial artists but for anyone who wants to apply the timeless principles of this text to their life, the book analyzes the process of struggle and mastery over conflict that underlies every level of human interaction.
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The book Beyond Anthropocentrism, i.e. Demand for the Impossible? The Questions of Culture and Other Questions in Social Theory and Practice of Conversation concentrates on man and his psycho-physical condition, taking special account to its ethical consequences for the world and himself. However, the book also tries to make him leave his privileged status. The monograph is divided into three parts. Chapter 1: Culture in Theory presents essential findings focused on the key term, “culture”. Chapter 2: Culture in Practice presents seven in-depth interviews conducted in the years 2020–2021 with the researchers representing a spectrum of different scientific disciplines: Ewa Bińczyk, Katarzyna Dembicz, Bogumiła Lisocka-Jaegermann, Joanna Ostrowska, Hanna Rubinkowska-Anioł, Jolanta Sujecka, Anna Ziębińska-Witek. In Conclusion, the fundamental problem of the posthumanistic (non-anthropocentric) vision of the world is paid attention to.
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