Nimis poeta. Obraz grafomana w dawnej epigramatyce

Author(s): Magdalena Piskała / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

The article discusses the issue of talentless writing as a topic of epigrams in both the Ancient and the Old-Polish literature. The text is an attempt to examine the emergence of the talentless writer motif in old epigrammatic literature, its subsequent persistence and its relation to the concept of poetry and the poet that prevailed in epigrammatic poetry of the era as well as in the contemporary literary theory that discussed the genre. The article reconstructs the positive model of epigrammatic poetry which emerges from epigrams about bad poets and shows how the authors relate to this model when writing about their own poetry, what shortcomings they see in their work and how they try to justify themselves in the poems addressed to their readers or critics. In order to present the problem comprehensively and answer the pertinent questions, the analysis focuses on epigrams of less-known writers such as Jan Daniecki, Albert Ines, Józef Epifani Minasowicz or Adam Łabęcki, though the leading epigrammatists of the Old-Polish period, Wespazjan Kochowski and Wacław Potocki, were also included.

Poetyckie i prozatorskie „sylwy” – wobec tradycji retorycznej

Author(s): Iwona Słomak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

The article aimed at arranging and correcting the state of research on the functioning of the notion of “silva” in Old-Polish discourses. Basing on an initial division into the so called “silvae rerum” and poetic “silvas”, the author of the article quotes particular paragraphs of works written by the Ancient authors (mainly by Cicero) to which the references were made later on on the occasion of using the category of “silva rerum” in rhetorical works and headings of the collections of eruditions, symbols and “well-known quotations”, etc. published. The examples in question were presented in the article preceded by a summary of the contents of the coursebooks chapters by Iuglaris (Aloysius Iuglaris) as well as Jan Kwiatkiewicz and Veranius (Caietanus Felix Veranius). Next, the tradition of understanding “silvas” deriving from Statius was discussed. The last part of the text is devoted to the relationship between strongly-rhetoricised “silvas” of Statius type, and allegedly non-rhetoricised selected “silvas” of the twentieth century.

„Być kronikarzem własnego zaniku”. Lektura "Dziennika" Jerzego Pilcha

Author(s): Monika Ładoń / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

The text concerns one of the main motives to be found in journal notes made by Jerzy Pilch, the motive of disease. The author of the text pays attention to diversified realization strategies of this phenomenon in Pilch’s text. To the most important belongs rationalization of the process of getting ill, withdrawal of one’s own body from the text, and accumulation of formulas aiming at concealment or camouflage of pain and suffering. The author also asks a question on the functions of disease textualisation, especially in the light of the autotherapic power of noting down many a time questioned by Pilch. Besides, what is important in this book is irony, scorn, and black humour that stylistically organise Pilch’s intimate testimony. In final, Pilch’s journal of disease turns out to be a refined game with oneself, a reader and genological possibilities of a journal.

Refleksja metaliteracka w twórczości Stanisława Samuela Szemiota

Author(s): Paweł Ciechan / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

Stanisław Samuel Szemiot (about 1657–1684) is an author of "Sumariusz wierszów", a collection written between 1674 and 1684, characterized by a big genre and thematic heterogeneity. The collection includes didactic, religious, occasional and satirical works, as well as epigrams, aphorisms, songs or rhymed narrative samples. One of the topics dealt with by the poet is a meta-literary one. As early as in first works of his "Sumariusz", Szemiot presents his poetic programme and declares originality. A poet in the act of writing is, according to him, unlimited, and creates for his own pleasure, waiting for neither approval or disapproval on the part of his readers. Poetry, on the other hand, even the lowest one, is a way for being inscribed into the history. One should make it clear here that “writing for oneself” means writing literature for one’s own use. The very expression suggests an intimate tone addressed to the circle of close relatives: family, friends or neighbours. Szemiot was not ambitious enough or too shy to publish his poems. Further considerations of the writer from Przegaliny correspond with metaliterary views by Jan Kochanowski, Jakub Kazimierz Haur or Łukasz Opaliński. Voicing his own literary programme, Stanisław Samuel Szemiot proclaims above all an artistic freedom of the poet-landowner. Poetry that is the effect of “a non-idle idling”, as he claims, should not be subject to evaluation as constitutes the values in itself as an intellectual entertainment, and allows for avoiding what the 17th century writers call a very harmful idleness. Meta-literary reflections made by the author of "Sumariusz wierszów" go beyond the horizon of the “Sarmatian province” or at least prove that his literary awareness bears a comparison with such landowner poets as Wespazjan Kochowski or Wacław Potocki.

"Smak rabarbaru" (fragment)

Author(s): Mariusz Sieniewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

U źródeł żądzy pisania Czesława Miłosza

Author(s): Anna Szawerna-Dyrszka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

The article show what turned out decisive in Miłosz’s childhood and early youth times that made him later on decide to become a writer. The author examines circumstances under which Miłosz’s linguistic sensitivity in the “pre-writing” period, looks at his first individual reading, and writing samples subsequently. The correspondence between a beginner writer with Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz proves a hypothesis that Miłosz’s writing desire is secondary from the beginning in the light of his reality desire. A written word is aimed at capturing it and maintaining it most directly and as it is possible, namely referring directly to the world (not the written word). The aim of writing, on the other hand, derives from curiosity of the thing, the same that accompanied Miłosz before he had learned how to read and write.

Czy może istnieć poezja niemelancholijna [dot. A. Świeściak: "Melancholia w poezji polskiej po 1989 roku]"

Author(s): Krzysztof Hoffmann / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

The text is a review of "Melancholia w poezji polskiej po 1989 roku", a book by Alina Świeściak (Kraków: Universitas, 2011). Hoffmann positions the work in the broader panorama of Polish humanistic studies on melancholy which intensified around the turn of the century and are still relevant today. For Świeściak melancholy is not only an array of meanings surrounding a gap, emptiness and mortality in contemporary poetry (among others by Różewicz, Krynicki, Dycki, Kielar, Sosnowski), but it is also a figure that enables reflection on the notions of corporality or sight. The review makes an attempt to reconstruct these key concepts and to inquire about the limits of the notion of melancholy and questions the book's silence of Marcin Świetlicki's poetry.

Dyskursy, ekskursy, wielomówność i pobocza narracyjne. (Propozycje interpretacji miejsca dygresji w epice sarmackiej na przykładzie "Argenidy"...)

Author(s): Agnieszka Czechowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

The narrative poems by Wacław Potocki show a clear tendency to interpolate the fictional structure of works via numerous digressions. The latter take on the form of selfexisting multigenre lyrical works, satirical intarsia, rhetorical monologues of characters or discourses and arguments conducted by them. The poet’s preferences for digressions and multplied reflections parallel to the main action of works, though not necessarilly depended on it, are best proved by "Argenida", "Transakcyja wojny chocimskiej" and "Nowy zaciąg". The very poems, a romance, epos and Messianic poem, are characterised by a clearly discoursive nature, which makes their fictional action seem as much a poetic form of mimesis as the author’s possibility to develop his rhetorical initiatives. This characteristic feature of poet’s narrative works, considered as a manifestation of “multiple speech” constitutes a structural quality of "Argenida", a poem being a creative translation of "Argenis", a Latin political romance by John Barclay. In this work, the presence of reflection, advice or lyrical and rhetorical excurses is connected with the quality of the adapted work as such, clearly the background one, where the fictional action permeates into the discoursive plan. The analysis of Wacław Potocki’s epic works in the light of the Polish and European early-modern literary practice allows for noticing the fact that the exposition of a digressive perspective of extra sphaeram is not a patent of a “multiple speaking” poet from Łużna, but an important and desired feature of the early-modern European narratives.

Osobista gra z losem. Z Mariuszem Sieniewiczem rozmawia Dariusz Nowacki

Author(s): Dariusz Nowacki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

A conversation with Mariusz Sieniewicz by Dariusz Nowacki

Dokąd może zaprowadzić jeden wiersz barokowego poety? [dot. K. Mrowcewicz: "Małe folio (historia jednego wiersza)"]

Author(s): Mariola Jarczykowa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

The review underlines the cognitive and aesthetic values of "Małe folio (historia jednego wiersza)", a book by Mrowcewicz who interprets the poem "Na oczy królewny angielskiej, która była za Fryderykiem, falcgrafem reńskim, obranym królem czeskim" by Daniel Naborowski in many ways. The researcher contrasted the poem by a Polish poet with the French original by Honorat de Porchères Laugier, pointed to significant differences between the texts, and derived European contexts from both works. Bringing the characters of the poem closer, Mrowcewicz used unpublished sources, and successfully chose illustrations presenting the people and events in question. The review paid attention to archive records concerning the English princess to be found in Radziwiłł’s property that Mrowcewicz did not use. The author of "Małe foli", in his essayistic form, offers readers interesting research hypotheses concerning Naborowski’s contacts with Shakespeare, a magic garden of the Brotherhood of Rose’s Knight in Heidelberg, as well as Radziwiłł’s connections with European courts, which has not been the subject of academic reflections so far, and constitutes a great value of the publication.

Śląska okolica [dot. E. Dutka: "Zapisywanie miejsca. Szkice o Śląsku w literaturze przełomu wieków XX i XXI"]

Author(s): Cezary Rosiński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

"Zapisywanie miejsca. Szkice o Śląsku w literaturze przełomu wieków XX i XXI" by Elżbieta Dutka is a virgin work devoted to the relationship between a human being and a concrete and real space, it being Silesia. The author focuses on topographies – various ways of inscribing places into the culture, while the place may mean here a concrete localization, phantasmagory, a private homeland or even an internal conception of the author. The researcher is interested in a spacious dimension of human experiences, yet she does not aim at a synthesis of the phenomena observed, but stops at an overview of Silesia in various fields of art and the analysis as well as interpretation of selected works. She bases her discussions on theoretical assumptions by Martin Heidegger, Hanna Buczyńska-Garewicz and Tadeusz Sławek. At the same time, she looks for values that are universal and global in localness, which is not necessarily translatable.

"Poetyka"

Author(s): Julius Caesar Scaliger / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

Ukryć się w pugilaresie. Praktyki pisania Ignacego Domeyki

Author(s): Beata Mytych-Forajter / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

The article by Beata Mytych-Forajter treats about works written by Mickiewicz’s friend, a geologist, and mining engineer who was very successful in Chile, South-America. Texts by Domeyko, located at the borderline of various forms and genres (a journal, diary, journey report), are, above all, connected with the need to note down oneself, leave an existential mark behind, and transform experiences into a notation. A strange author’s talentless writing who did not leave his portable wallet, serving the purpose of the shelter for thoughts, for the most of his life, but also a miniaturized ersatz of house is related to this identity project.

Opisane, przypomniane [dot. S. Buryła: "Tematy (nie)opisane"]

Author(s): Monika Wycykał / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

The review discusses the latest book by Sławomir Buryła entitled "Tematy (nie)opisane". Three essays in which the author deals with the issues that are absent or misrepresented in literary studies devoted to the Holocaust constitute the very article. Buryła makes a difficult attempt to consider how the Polish literature comes to terms with painful topics such as looting, informing, and a moral evaluation of Hitlerites. Making use of a rich written material, the author shows how many areas are still under-read despite a peculiar “overproduction” of texts on Shoah. Books commented on by Buryła allowed him to show numerous tensions, worries and the lack of homogeneity when going through one of the most traumatic experiences in the history of mankind. The book seems to be even more important because it inscribes itself into the trend of the current social and political life where it is more and more difficult to experience the basic value of the humanities such as understanding other people and their suffering.

„Zdarza się raz na milion samobójczych snów” – o ostatnich powieściach Mariusza Sieniewicza

Author(s): Tomasz Mizerkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

The author of the article discusses new poetics of the novel by Mariusz Sieniewicz to be found in such works as "Rebelia", "Miasto Szklanych Słoni" and "Spowiedź Śpiącej Królewny". What plays a decisive role in these works is imagination principles which, according to the author of the article, allows for calling the last novels by Sieniewicz spectroanalyses of contemporaneity. The characters of the works create themselves ghostly versions of reality, thanks to which they maintain the rest of the subjective activity. The very practice, in turn, leads to a gradual regaining of what is closest to an extremely individual experience, that is an every-day life. The consequence of these efforts is a personal metamorphosis (metanoia), a total change in the relationships between the world, and overcoming depressive moods. What the characters take part in is a unique experience of happiness, almost unknown in contemporary culture extorting and regulating happiness.

Wielość odczytań [dot. H. Kirchner: "Nałkowska albo życie pisane"]

Author(s): Bernadetta Darska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (4)/2013

A review of Zofia Nałkowska’s biography, entitled "Nałkowska albo życie pisane" reflects the appreciation of a majestic work done by Hanna Kirchner. It is worth emphasizing the vividness of the person being analysed and appreciating the richness of meanings to be found in her works. What comes first in the biography reviewed is a parallel analysis of Nałkowska’s writing achievements and life experiences made by Kirchner. The review pointed to the contemporary nature of the opinions made by the writer in question, and erudition represented by the author of her biography.

UNIVERZALNOST LJUDSKIH PRAVA U SVJETLU KANTOVE MORALNE FILOZOFIJE

Author(s): Dejan Vanjek / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 04/2003

This essay is conceived to reaffirmed Kant’s moral philosophy, by showing that such a system of ethics has not become outmoded by postmodern ethical currents, but that its importance is more likely to lie in the fact that it can be properly allocated. The first postulate is demonstrated in this work through a correlation of Kant’s moral, and subsequently practical, philosophy with the philosophical aspects of contemporary human rights issues. The ultimate demand of human rights ideology for universal acceptance and affirmation was argued in a philosophico-ethical manner through Kant’s moral and practical philosophy. Furthermore, there emerges, through the affirmation of the human rights ethic as the duty to act in terms of global concern for humanity, the possibility of an approximation to the ideal of the cosmopolitan society and the affirmation of the particular human rights culture, which could then compensate for the limited scope of the developing legal and political mechanisms designed to implement human rights. Within this work, Kant’s moral philosophy has been used in support of the universality of human rights and to help isolate a separate and autonomous human rights ethic. Rationality thus proves to be the main factor that may bring about global cohesion around the acceptance of human rights. The basic elements of human rights ideology (freedom, dignity, tolerance, and equal, inalienable, inseparable rights conferred by the sole fact of being a member of humanity) have found their common place in the fact of human rationality and the notion of humanity derived from it, explicated in terms of Kant’s moral and practical philosophy.

PEDESET GODINA NAKON HIROŠIME

Author(s): John Rawls / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 04/2003

Fifty years after bombing Hiroshima, Rawls reflects a question whether that could be justified. Strongly opposing that act, Rawls is acctually setting principles governing the conduct of war of democratic peoples. Practical means-end reasoning must not overwhelm these principles. There is an exception, though, the only one – in times of extreme crisis. Further, discussing a statesmen’s role in leading a democratic regime, for they are the the ones that have huge importance in creating democratic surrounding, to secure just and lasting peace.

BOSANSKO PITANJE I SRBI U BOSNI I HERCEGOVINI

Author(s): Ljubomir Berberović / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 04/2003

IZAZOV STRANOG

Author(s): Bernhard Waldenfels / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 04/2003

This paper is a brief and concentrated introduction to a key problem of Bernhard Waldenfels’ research: the problem of “das Fremde”. The term has several meanings in English, standing mainly for “foreign”, “alien” and “strange”. Waldenfels’ thesis is that “something foreign” does not constitute any of the traditional philosophical concepts, and that all of those concepts, like our culture in general, is posited on the exclusion of “the foreign”. Nevertheless, a degree of challenge from the foreign is always perceptible: something foreign is always present in our experience. Waldenfels distinguishes different modes of foreign presence, distinguishes it from the simple “other”, and claims that “foreign” is always something that belongs to a different order, an order different from our own: foreign is something “extra-ordinary”. With that difference in mind, Waldenfels finally shows how “foreign” is not an absolute object: there is no “general foreign”, for the same reason that there is no “general left”. Foreign is an unstable term, which cannot be either totally determined or totally avoided. The possible cultural roots and consequences of this problem are especially emphasized.