Konsekwencje założeń i decyzji edytorskich
The Consequences of Editorial Assumptions And Decisions

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the issue of consequences of editor’s ‘final says’, especially with regard to texts preventing any indisputable or unambiguous decision. Using two examples, i.e. the critical editions of B. Prus’s Faraon (by Zygmunt Szweykowski) and of Jan Kasprowicz’s works (by Roman Loth), the author focuses on two issues. Firstly, manuscript copies of text fragments which the author has not included, for any conceivable reason (be it, e.g., censorship intercessions), in the version to be edited and published, or, fragments removed from subsequent editions, make one reconsider how much of a ‘final say’ such authors’ decisions may have, and review the status of editions containing text versions not authorised by the author, not having been read and/or commented on by his/her contemporaries. Secondly, should one select the last author-approved edition of an early work as a basis, then the issue of chronology and dynamism of that particular author’s artistic development, or his/her actual positioning in the literary life of his/her own time, cannot possibly be neglected – the same being true for the question of which text was the basis for critical reception (and sometimes also literary-history reception). As a consequence, one cannot thus avoid the question whether the editor can cope with a ‘work in motion’ – a text that appears in, and exists through, several much differing editorial versions. Thus, a very basic problem requires being considered. If the editing rules assumed by the editors trigger so much doubt, then one might state with certainty that they appear not to cover the real textual-critical issues relative to pieces being published.

• Details
• Contents