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În ultimul deceniu, după prăbuşirea ideologiei comuniste, s-a observat efortul redefinirii conceptului identitar, concept care presupune nu doar teoretic prezenta unui nivel corepunzător al conştiinţei naţionale. La rândul ei, problema conştiinţei naţionale în Europa Centrală şi de Sud-Est a devenit pregnantă în secolul al XIX-lea, cu precădere sub influenţa ideilor lui Herder şi a mişcărilor democratice din Franţa.
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Adam Pomorski in conversation with Sebastian Duda and Katarzyna Jabłońska
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Mirosław Tryczyk’s first book on the participation of Poles in the HolocaustMiasta śmierci (cities of death), Sąsiedzkie pogromy Żydów (neighbors’ pogroms of Jews) was published in 2015. Speaking with the voices of the victims, perpetrators and bystanders, the author described the crimes committed in several places in Białystok in the summer of 1941. He reconstructed the appalling trajectory of the murders based on the repetition of similar sequences of events. The publication of Miasta śmierci did not lead to heated controversies boiling or mobilization on the side of the defenders of Polish innocence, who usually mobilize as soon as the subject of the participation of Poles in the Holocaust is brought light. For some reason Tryczyk was spared this spectacle of public chastising. In view of the silence of the usually sonorous defenders of the good of the Poles, serious allegations against the author of the book were made in the historical reviews. What specifically did they relate to? What was the reception among historians ? What conclusions can be drawn from that discussion? The article attempts to answer these and other questions.
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Review of: Grażyna Krupińska - Elisa-Maria Hiemer, Autobiographisches Schreiben als ästhetisches Problem. Jüdische Vielfalt in der polnischen und deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2019, 212 s.
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The article, based on Wojciech Górecki’s reportages (travel narratives), examines the traces of the shattered subjectivity of the Soviet empire in its scattered peripheries: states and para-states. Referring to the Derridian triad – remnants, traces, and fragments – the literary reflection attempted here concerns the sphere of ontologization, that is, capturing the meanings emerging after the disintegration of political, social, and economic ties. Among important methodological inspirations are postcolonialism, Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction and the essays by Gorgio Agamben and Jean Baudrillard, which lead to the conclusion that state structures never die, but manifest their presence in spectral ways.
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Multiculturalism is one of the crucial elements on all-levels in the humanities, especially when it comes to the Polish language and literature. Both compulsory and supplementary reading discussed during Polish classes should address this vital topic to affect children’s and teenagers’ values and attitudes. In this article, a list of readings included in the 2017 general education core curriculum for grades 4–8 of elementary school is examined to demonstrate that other cultures are barely mentioned in the books listed in that document. Based on this analysis, the author of the article suggests several literary texts and teaching methods that teachers can use during their lessons in order to develop intercultural competencies.
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Assunta is a digressive poem showing Norwid’s views on art, philosophy and religion. According to the aesthetic assumptions of Romanticism, art has its source in internal experience, religious experience, and is of a metaphysical nature. Modernist interpretations of Norwid’s works, to which the article was devoted, reveal its metaphysical aspects. Determining the direction and significance of influences becomes an extremely important task. The author of Assunta was perceived at the end of the nineteenth century as a patron of modernism, his name was mentioned together with that of Baudelaire, comments about him appeared in the context of discussions on modern literature, theater and the art of acting. Norwid’s work was in line with the „paradigm of sight-centricism”, the poet did not avoid optical metaphors, he used the poetics of chiaroscuro and space framing, which in Assunt’s poem gained a vertical character. The motives of improvement and growth played an important role in the piece. Reflecting on their meaning allowed to establish the rank of the metapoetic remarks contained in Assunta. The works of Norwid, recalled in the era of modernism, have received many interpretations, including critical ones, based on „troublesome” concealments. Zenon Przesmycki believed that this work was not fully understood, although attempts were made to include it in the aesthetics of modernism. However, it was recognized that it was the missing link in the development of Polish symbolist poetry (it is also worth emphasizing its links with „colorists” – as the Impressionists were called). In Assunta, referring to the Divine Comedy by Dante and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the contemplative path of knowledge is shown. „Looking to heaven” is therefore a cognitive act in which reason coexists with faith.
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This paper discusses the satirical pamphlet Kalendar rymskyj novy [The New Roman Calendar], part of Herasym Smotrytsky’s book better known as Kliuch tsarstva nebesnoho [The Key to the Heavenly Kingdom, 1587], which is the first printed example of Orthodox polemical literature in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In his pamphlet, Smotrytsky shows the negative social consequences of the calendar reform by Pope Gregory XIII (1582) and categorically rejects the new calendar. Instead of scientific argumentation, he uses satire with irony, sarcasm, exaggeration and anecdotes. He also writes in a language close to the vernacular. All of this made his work understandable and convincing for Orthodox Ruthenians (Ukrainians and Belarusians) and accessible to the broad masses.
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In this article, Bożena Szałasta-Rogowska focuses on the work and achievements of the Polish Publishing Fund (PFW) in Canada, an institution that has been dynamically active on the cultural forum for over 40 years, publishing books and organizing various types of meetings and events promoting Polish literature abroad. PFW is an association which shapes the cultural and literary life of the Polish emigration community in Canada. Szałasta-Rogowska identifies and presents the most important poetic publications among the achievements of PFW. She mainly analyzes books of poetry published by PFW both independently or in cooperation with domestic partners. Among them, two anthologies deserve special attention: Seven Polish Canadian Poets and Antologia poezji polskiej na obczyźnie 1939–1999 [Anthology of Polish Poetry Abroad 1939–1999] and poems by so-called “Canadian Continenters” (Bogdan Czaykowski, Florian Śmieja and Andrzej Busza) and poets of the post-Solidarity emigration (e.g., Marek Kusiba, Edward Zyman and Grażyna Zambrzycka). This review and description of poetic publications given in this article, combined with a brief historical outline, shows that PFW is not only a publisher, but also a chronicler, an archiver, a patron of the arts and finally a “discoverer” of poetic talents.
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The article presents the relationship between Frédéric Chopin and Zygmunt Krasiński both on the biographical level and in the relationship between the word and the sound that Krasiński often wrote about in his letters. A special expression of the dialogue between poetry and music described by the poet are Chopin’s compositions to the words of poets contemporary to him, which is especially true about the words of the motto from Krasiński’s poem Ostatni (The last poem). It is extraordinary in the context of Chopin’s songs as it is not only a musical illustration, but also a sophisticated interpretation of the text through music. The attempts to present poetic content through musical notation presented in the article lead to the conclusion about Chopin as a conscious recipient of a literary work who, like Krasiński, saw in the symbiosis of word and sound the possibility for expressing internal experience.
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The drama Ostatni koncert (The Last Concert) (1960) by Stanisława Fleszarowa- Muskat, originally written as a radio play, sits on the border between popular and fictional literature. The text was intended for a wide audience. The plot focuses on a single event – Frédéric Chopin’s last concert in Warsaw, just before his departure to France, which took place on October 11, 1830. Youth, as it was understood by the romantics, turns out to be a time that shaped Chopin’s artistic personality. In this drama, the independence background is important as it highlights Chopin’s ties to the fate of his homeland, which gives his music a patriotic and revolutionary dimension. In sounds, Chopin’s brilliant music expresses the essence of the Polish soul: its nobility and love of freedom. Chopin’s concert took place at a turning point both for the composer and for the nation whose spirit he expressed through sounds. The drama about Chopin, the national genius, is at the same time a drama about a national community that acquires its identity by identifying with his music.
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The first part of this article discusses the specificity of Kacper Bartczak’s work, determined by the interdependence of his poetic, literary and translation activities. At the same time, the reasons for the lack of interest of critics writing about Bartczak in the issue of autobiography are indicated. The second part of the article, focused on a comparative analysis of two versions of a fragment of the autobiographical essay The Law of the Poem and the poem In Love I Have an Access to My Father’s Body from the book Naworadiowa (2019), shows that Bartczak’s purpose in including autobiographical material in his texts is not to point to the biographical underbelly of his work, but to gain new access to the matter of his own biography, allowing him to develop new techniques or forms of writing.
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‘Kresy’ [borderlands/outskirts] is a sentimental term used by Poles to denote the lands of today’s Western Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. The Polish rule in that region has rarely been discussed in terms of colonialism. In this article, I employ the framework of postcolonial theory within the context of Polish rule in ‘Kresy’. The article juxtaposes anthropologist Józef Obrębski’s ethnographic writings about Polesia region (a part of ‘Kresy’ that was polonised in the most extreme manner) with Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad – a Polish-British author born and raised in ‘Kresy’, that during his time was subjugated by Russian Empire. The figure of Conrad, whose ambivalent relationship with colonialism was pointed out by many postcolonial scholars starting with Chinua Achebe, becomes a point of departure to think about what Maria Janion describes as ‘the paradoxical Polish postcolonial mentality’: the ambivalence of being a colonised coloniser. The article is an attempt of contribution to the ongoing debate about identity and dependence in the East Central Europe region.
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In the second half of the nineteenth century, writers and poets played a huge role in shaping and sustaining the spirit of a nation suffering under the yoke of partition. Literature was a treasury of free thought, sustaining the spirit of the nation and encouraging the struggle to maintain Polishness. The space was provided by literary fiction and the personal involvement of its creators in social events. Maria Konopnicka was actively involved in this trend. Raised in a patriotic atmosphere, she was sensitive to any restriction of the country’s freedom. Her upbringing was accompanied by memories and worship of the heroic past of her father and uncle Ignacy Wasiłowski, with whom she corresponded for almost twenty years. Her love for Poland and sensitivity to the cause of her freedom run through the letters she wrote to her relative with tenderness and sincerity. They are a mine of information about the sociopolitical and cultural life of the post-Civil War era and bring invaluable information about Konopnicka’s political involvement and her commitment to the struggle for the resurrection of the nation.
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In the article I analyse different types of reading Henryk Sienkiewicz’s various historical characters at school. The reading of Sienkiewicz’s works is frequently too general and schematic, therefore I suggest an attempt to read this writer with the use of poststructural theories. In this text I am interested in ways of using modern narratology (I appeal to Hayden White) to the analysis of the narration in „Krzyżacy”.
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The article in an attempt to translate the feminist critique onto the language of school practice. The author undertakes an attempt of a feminist reading of Pani Dulska by Gabriela Zapolska. She indicates that this way of reading is effective for teaching literature at school. It significantly broadens the interpretative possibilities and outlines the cultural and social spectrum of gender roles.
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The article is an attempt to show the way of analysing the works of Pasierb as a regional phenomenon on the one hand, and a universal poet speaking in depth about our existence on the other. In my article I suggest the reading of Pasierb’s haiku in the school practice. Due to the implementation of hermeneutics as an interpretative method, the poems may interest the students and develop their reflection on the world.
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Popular literature is close to students and can be used as a starting point to high literature; by using similarities in motives, which exist in simplified, and schematic way in the popular literature, and which are deepened, and ambiguously understood in the high literature. The starting point are ‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins and the motives of utopia and dystopia occurring in it. This writing is collated with the poem ‘Utopia’ written by Wisława Szymborska in order to make a deeper analysis of the utopian motive.
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