Gemeinschaftsbildung in Mediendiskursen: Sprachliche Konstitution von Gemeinschaft anhand des Diskurses um „Kapuściński non-fiction” im deutsch-polnischen Kontext

Author(s): Anna Hanus / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2021

The sharing of opinions, the formation of communities of like-minded people in borderless interaction are especially significant for Internet communication. The community-building function of media offerings also comes to bear in (online) press discourses. Thus, the formation of communities through communication can take place in journalistic public spheres. Whether this is the case in the media discourse on the biography of the Polish reporter Ryszard Kapuściński (“Kapuściński nonfiction” by Artur Domosławski) will be examined in this article. In order to verify this (online) press articles will be analysed that were published both in Poland and in German-speaking countries as a reaction to Artur Domosławski’s controversial book. The primary aim is to find out whether and/or how certain collectives or communities of local, national or transnational character can be identified in a particular discourse occurring in the form of corpus texts.

Profesor Mirosław Skarżyński (1952–2019)

Author(s): Maciej Rak,Anna Czelakowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 28/2019

Obserwator i jego pozycja w opowiadaniu Tadeusza Borowskiego „Odwiedziny”

Author(s): Łukasz Wnuk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 28/2019

The article is an analysis of Tadeusz Borowski’s short story Odwiedziny (‘The visit’). It focuses on linguistic and narrative devices through which the speaker influences the recipient’s perception, and so shapes the reading of his work. The first part is introductory, it presents the goals of the paper. The next part recalls the most important existing interpretations, both of Borowski’s literary output as a whole, and of the text at hand. They form the starting point to an analysis of the position of the character-narrator with regard to the events he is describing, and to the relation between the author, the narrator, and the main character of the story. These considerations constitute the third part of the present paper. It begins with a citation of the full text of the story, and is followed by the main argument announced in the title which refers to Ronald Langacker’s cognitive grammar and takes into special consideration such notions as scene, current discourse space, and vantage point. The closing part of the paper contains conclusions, contrasted with the theses put forward in the context of Borowski’s work, as well as suggestions of possible directions of further analysis of the story within the framework of cognitive linguistics.

Współ-powiedzenie… O funkcji wielokropka w języku ogólnym i w poezji Bolesława Leśmiana

Author(s): Joanna Zaucha / Language(s): Polish Issue: 29/2020

The goal of the paper is to identify the function of ellipsis in general Polish, and in Bolesław Leśmian’s poetry. This author assumes that ellipsis corresponds to a specific intonation, has a code character, and belongs to the group of dialogic perspective operators (cf. Wajszczuk 2005). Its function is simply an appeal to the addressee, to complete the utterance with specific content by themselves. The unit is used creatively by Bolesław Leśmian. In his poetry, co-saying serves to express the transcendence of three boundaries set by the oppositions I : you, here : there, yes : no.

Wariancje semantyczne pojęcia "kołtuna" w wybranych tekstach kultury polskiej i litewskiej

Author(s): Zofia Sawaniewska-Mochowa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 29/2020

The paper discusses semantic changes and stylistic derivation of the cultural concept of kołtun ‘Polish plait’ (Plica polonica) in Polish and Lithuanian. Although today it is impossible to meet a person with a kołtun on their head, the concept itself, as an element of socially established knowledge of the world, has survived and is still used in various discourses (ranging from dialectal texts and folklore, belles-lettres and journalistic writing, to contemporary Internet messages), to communicate different meanings, both literal and metaphorical.There are similarities and differences between the conceptualizations of kołtun in texts of Polish and Lithuanian cultures. The unifying element is the perception of kołtun as a formation of entangled hair or a mysterious disease that is inscribed into the folk system of beliefs and magical rituals. On the other hand, what sets the analysed concept apart in the two languages, is a much richer resource of folk and colloquial forms (compounds, hybrid words, phrasemes) in Lithuanian, and in addition, the lack of negative evaluation of kołtun in Lithuanian, whereas in Polish the word is often used to describe a backward, small-minded person.

Ognista miłość. Oda Macieja Kazimierza Sarbiewskiego do Świętego Stanisława Kostki

Author(s): Elwira Buszewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1 (58)/2021

The objective of the article is to provide background for the reading of a new annotated bilingual edition of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski’s ode to Saint Stanislaus Kostka. Written in 1638, when Kostka had not yet been canonized, the ode was published posthumously, many years after the poet’s death. First, the origins of the poem are presented, including the suggestions advanced by Stanisław Łubieński, the bishop of Płock, that Sarbiewski should create odes worshipping Polish saints. Other texts devoted to the venerable young man written by, or attributed to Sarbiewski are also briefly discussed. This is followed by an analysis of the ode, with special focus on its visual and theatrical properties, and on the poet’s emphasis on the mystic experiences of the Jesuit saint and his special bond with Mary. The manner of portraying the saint’s life deployed by Sarbiewski is shown to be modelled on the contemporary iconographic tradition, especially a drawing by Giacomo Lauro, which, copied by an anonymous artist was subsequently included in the collection Icones et miracula sanctorum Poloniae (Cologne 1605). Literary hagiographic works on which Sarbiewski might have drawn – both poetry and prose – are also mentioned. After the introductory section, the ode is presented in two language versions: the original Latin and the new Polish translation. The text is provided with comments detailing historical facts, discussing the ancient similia and elocutionary relations to Sarbiewski’s other texts.

U bram niebios. Oda (IV 30) Macieja Kazimierza Sarbiewskiego do Janusza Skumina Tyszkiewicza

Author(s): Wojciech Ryczek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4 (57)/2020

The main purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it presents the edition of a Latin ode written by Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski SJ (1595–1640) dedicated to Janusz Skumin Tyszkiewicz (1572–1642), Voivode of Trakai, after the death of his beloved wife, Barbara née Naruszewicz (1580–1627). A new Polish translation of this text and a commentary are also provided. Secondly, the first part of the paper, or the invitation to close reading, aims at giving more detailed information about the rhetorical architecture of the ode, particularly its composition, arguments, and figures. Sarbiewski, regarded as the most brilliant imitator of Horatian lyrical discourse in early-modern Europe (“Christian Horace”), used the established schemes and formulas to create a Christian consolation based on reinventing the lyrical arguments. The persuasive power of his ode is strongly related to vivid, evocative, and meaningful images. The correlation between divine inspiration and poetic perfection allowed him to refashion the rhetorical patterns of epicedium. Sarbiewski wanted to demonstrate his ability to use various modes of linguistic expression. Thus, in the heart of his consolation there is a story about “the cracks” (rimae) in heaven’s gate and a poet who can take a short glimpse into “the heavenly city” (urbs caelestis). The consolation is to confirm the belief that, following departure, a deceased can live in the realm of eternal joy and happiness. Paradoxically, he or she can be happier there than during his or her earthly life. Despite its rhetorical refinement and poetical elaboration, it always serves the same purpose. Moreover, its realisation only becomes possible due to literary mediation. The poet appears to be the mediator between the world of the living and the world of the dead. The final verses of the poem bring a moral lesson best epitomized in a brief appeal “do not want more” (nec tu plura velis), addressed not only to Tyszkiewicz, but also to the poet himself and the readers.

Romańska alba tradycyjna. Między pieśnią ludową a dworską

Author(s): Grażyna Urban-Godziek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2 (55)/2020

This paper initiates a series of texts devoted to genres of love songs that combine the motif of a parting or meeting of lovers at the break of dawn. It is a genological introduction to the classification of Polish poems of this kind from the 16th and 17th centuries (Chapter 1. Introduction. Premises for this cycle of studies). Morning love songs—here referred to as albas or alboradas—appeared at the very beginning of mediaeval Romance lyricism, that is, at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries (Mozarabic kharja). Although they originated from folk ‘women’s songs’, they were soon included in the repertoire of troubadours and incorporated into their genre system. The first study is devoted to works focusing on lovers parting in the morning. It investigates the functioning of this type of lyric on the borderline between the traditional and courtly registers (Chapter 2. Controversy. Folk and learned albas; Chansone de femme and grand chant courtois) and presents a traditional version of alba (Chapter 3. Traditional alba (popular, folk)). The traditional alba is a thematic genre, focused on the scene of lovers parting at dawn. It is distinguished from the courtly alba (the troubadour type) by the important role of nature. The lovers meet outside the city, in natural scenery, and are awakened by the singing of morning birds (there are no guards, spies, or jealous husbands lurking in the background). The classification presented is based mainly on the findings of Pierre Bec, as well as on the research and collection of albas gathered by Toribio Fuente Cornejo. Chapter 3.1. Mozarabic kharja and its derivatives; Romanesque and Latin albas presents the oldest surviving texts, which are refrain-like fragments. Chapter 3.2. The Galician-Portuguese courtly version of traditional alba analyses a type of folk alba adapted to courtly lyricism, illustrated by the example of Nuno Fernandes Torneol’s Levad’ amigo. The discussion of these canonical forms of albas is extended with two proposed subtypes. The first is defined as the mixed type—traditional alba with courtly elements (chapter 3.3.) and illustrated by an example of the French alba Entre moi et mon amin. The elements of the setting (meeting in the open air, the role of the bird) come from the traditional form, which is also indicated by the lyrical subject—a woman. On the other hand, the strophic composition and metrics of the poem reveal the influence of courtly poetry. The other mixed type—courtly alba with traditional elements (chapter 3.4.), represented by two Occitan and two French texts, belongs to the fin’amor culture and has the features of the courtly version (types of characters, terminology, formal structure) with the traditional role of nature.

Post-Tridentine Liturgical Books for the Polish Church: Printed Chant Books from Kraków and Their Contexts

Author(s): Magdalena Komorowska / Language(s): English Issue: 1 (54)/2020

Post-Tridentine liturgical books printed in Poland have not attracted much attention from book historians. However, given their special, sacred, and confessionally unifying status, they provide interesting material for comparative study of printing in the large European cities (e.g., Antwerp, Venice), and smaller provincial centers such as Kraków. The paper presents as products of the printing press the Psalterium, Antiphonarium and Graduale Romanum printed in Kraków in 1599–1600 by Andrzej Piotrkowczyk as well as later editions of these works. The decision to commission them in a local print shop rather than abroad came after prolonged debates within the Polish Catholic hierarchy. Materials used by the printer (paper, type, ornaments etc.) and the results he achieved (typography) are analysed at the backdrop of European printing and related to more general problems involved with the production of complex and voluminous books in the economic and cultural realities of an Eastern European city.

Instancje nadawczo-odbiorcze w traktatach stawiarskich z XVI i XVII w.

Author(s): Kinga Tutak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 30/2020

The paper discusses the ways in which sender–recipient strategy is realized in old treatises on pond economy. It focuses on the indices of textual relations between the master of the pond art and the student. The analysis has shown that in both treatises, the recipient is that communicative instance which plays a much more significant role than the sender. The organization and arrangement of the textual space serves the good of the recipient. The sender employs for this purpose desiderative constructions, lexical indices of cohesion of the utterance, and semantic-syntactic parallelism of elements. The authors of the treatises skilfully include an iconographic component in their lecture; Strumieński even refers to specific objects in the extra-linguistic reality.

Rozważania nad koncepcją historii językoznawstwa polskiego

Author(s): Władysław T. Miodunka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 30/2020

The author explains his reason for taking up the topic by recalling his discussions with prof. Mirosław Skarżyński and encouraging him to prepare a publication in which he would present his conception of the history of Polish linguistics. Prof. Skarżyński will not write this paper any more, so this author decided to present his own reflections on the matter. He begins with the first grammar of Polish, Polonicae grammatices institutio, published in 1568 by a Frenchman Piotr Statorius-Stojeński, for foreigners who wish to learn the language. He presents the work against the European background, and shows that it belongs to the great European movement of the 16th century, of preparing descriptions of contemporary languages. This author proposes that the publication of Statorius’ grammar, and of Jan Mączyński’s Latin-Polish dictionary (1564), can be considered the actual beginnings of Polish linguistics. In relation to S. Urbańczyk who tied those beginnings to year 1751, this author moves the date nearly 200 years back. He also refers to the opinions of historians of science. The paper concludes with remarks on the place of applied linguistics and glottodidactics in Polish linguistics.

Z dziejów poetyckiej recepcji rycin do Tryumfów Petrarki: Mikołaj Rej, Maciej Stryjkowski, Stanisław Witkowski

Author(s): Radosław Grześkowiak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

The article deals with the poetic reception of six woodcuts made by Hans Brosamer for Petrarch’s Triumphs which were at the disposal of the printer Maciej Wirzbięta. Mikołaj Rej wrote a cycle of epigrams devoted to them that was included in the second edition of Źwierzyniec of 1574. In his epigrams, he made use of the scenes depicted in the woodcuts to formulate general moral advice. One of the engravings of the series, displaying the Triumph of Fame, was the subject of epigrams also by Maciej Stryjkowski (1574) and Stanisław Witkowski (1609). Both authors presented a successful interpretation of the engraving and its individual elements. The same graphic inspiration makes it possible for us to compare the sensitivity and technique of three Old-Polish poets.

Agata Sowińska, Hermetica średniowiecza i renesansu. Studium z historii myśli europejskiej

Author(s): Sylwia Konarska-Zimnicka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

Review of: Sylwia Konarska-Zimnicka - Agata Sowińska, Hermetica średniowiecza i renesansu. Studium z historii myśli europejskiej, Katowice 2018, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, ss. 222, LXXIII, [5]

Modlitewnik Pawła Dunin-Wolskiego kanclerza wielkiego koronnego, biskupa poznańskiego 1541–1542 r. Facsimile

Author(s): Marta M. Kacprzak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

Review of: Marta M. Kacprzak- Modlitewnik Pawła Dunin-Wolskiego kanclerza wielkiego koronnego, biskupa poznańskiego 1541–1542 r. Facsimile, wstęp Wiesław Wydra, Katarzyna Krzak-Weiss, Poznań 2018, Wydawnictwo Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne (Libri Precationum Illuminati Poloniae Veteris. Facsimilia), ss. 66, [4], [227]

Leksyka przestępcza w trylogii złodziejskiej Sergiusza Piaseckiego

Author(s): Ewa Kubusiak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 31/2021

The author of the article aims at reconstructing the criminal sociolect of the North-Eastern Borderlands in 1918-1919, based on The Criminal Trilogy by Sergiusz Piasecki. The plot of the novels takes place in Minsk Litewski, which, at that time, was full of thieves from all regions of Poland. In the novels, Piasecki recreated the sociolect of thieves living in the North-Eastern Borderlands, using the authentic criminal lexis. The authenticity of this sociolect is confirmed both by the materials provided by Piasecki himself (preface, footnotes and vocabulary of thieves’ language) and by their comparison with other lexicographic scientific descriptions concerning criminal vocabulary from the first half of the twentieth century.

Autotematyczna refleksja w intertekstualnym dialogu. Heretyckie telegramy Sándora Kányádiego w kontekście twórczości Zbigniewa Herberta

Author(s): Łukasz Woiński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2020

Sándor Kányadi in his poetic cycle Heretic Telegrams enters into an intertextual dialogue with Zbigniew Herbert’s output. This article attempts to interpret those poems which contain an autothematic reflection on literary creation, artistic expression, ways of narrating or the role of a poet in shaping collective consciousness. Kányádi establishes the opposition of fable and novel, presenting them as literary genres belonging to separate traditions, based on different perceptual patterns. These theses are accompanied by direct allusions to Zbigniew Herbert’s works, what naturally leads to the adoption of comparative literary methods.

Handbook of Polish, Czech and Slovak Holocaust Fiction. Works and Contexts. A Short Introduction to the Project with Two Entries

Author(s): Štěpán Balík,Agata Firlej,Elisa-Maria Hiemer,Jiří Holý,Hana Nichtburgerová / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

Handbook of Polish, Czech and Slovak Holocaust Fiction is a work in progress aiming at becoming a standard reference work addressed to universities and public libraries and the broader public. It includes novels, short stories, poems and plays written in Polish, Czech and Slovak within the scope of 650 standard pages. The table of contents consists of 53 articles focused on Polish, 45 articles on Czech, and 23 articles on Slovak literature. The editors provide an introduction about the main developments of Holocaust literature in the broader context of three lands: crucial topics, situations, characters, motifs and places, periodization due to political changes, reception processes in the national and transnational context. The Handbook aims primarily at the researchers and readers in Western Europe and the U.S. where the Polish, Czech and Slovak Holocaust fiction remains largely unknown. The project results from the cooperation among researchers from Polish, Czech, German and Slovak universities. This article presents two entries from Polish and Czech literature.

„Ile przemilczam, tego nie wypowiem”: o (prze)milczeniu w utworach Wisławy Szymborskiej i ich przekładzie na język niemiecki

Author(s): Joanna Kubaszczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 32/2021

Krystyna Pisarkowa emphasises the importance of means which participate in shaping the expression of emotions in a poetic text, and calls for extracting from the text “essential ingredients from seemingly minor semantic accents” (Pisarkowa 1998: 36). In this article, the author takes this inspiration and analyses how Wisława Szymborska applies silence in her poems as an aesthetic category and an expression of choked emotions, what indicators of silence she uses, and what happens with this silence in the translation of her poems into German by Karl Dedecius. The author concludes that a translator should be able to empathise with emotions and be an intermediary not only for the word, but also for the unspoken.

Wielojęzyczność w literaturze dokumentu osobistego: funkcje wykładników transkodowych

Author(s): Elżbieta Sękowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 32/2021

The article is dedicated to semantic functions of transcode markers in Polish émigré literature. Two diaries, written respectively by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński and Jan Lechoń, constitute the exemplification material. The diary genre, similarly to letters and memoirs, lends itself to introducing this kind of markers. Their presence reflects the multilingual competence of the author, as well as his mental, social, and psychological experience. The second language enables broadening the referential space of the first language and conveying emotions. The strategy of code switching depends on the motivation and goal of writing a given text. In Herling-Grudziński’s Journal Written by Night, foreign words from different languages abound. They fulfill several functions in the text, namely: metalinguistic, index and stylistic function. Their presence is justified by the content and by the role adopted by the author – the one of an interpreter of the political and social reality. The Diary by Lechoń is different in terms of types of predominant functions which can be distinguished in his text. Besides commenting on the émigré life, the author focuses on his emotions and experiences. Therefore, index and metalinguistic functions turn out to be the most important. Pointing out different strategies of introducing transcode markers in a text by its author is fundamental for the research on bilingualism in émigré writing.

Kustosz Niełatwej Pamięci. Na Marginesie Publikacji Zapisków Zygmunta Klukowskiego

Author(s): Marek Wierzbicki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2019

The article is an analysis of the content and form of the edition of Zygmunt Klukowski’s diaries and memoirs. It presents both their author’s personage and comments on the credibility of the information contained in his notes, regarding, for example, the achievements and failures of the Second Polish Republic, Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War, the Holocaust and banditry within the Polish independence underground after the war.