„Czerwona Marianna”, O polsko-francuskich związkach literackich na łamach „Odrodzenia” (1945–1950)

Author(s): Grzegorz Bąbiak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 70/2015

The article comprehensively presents French art and literature in a socio-cultural weekly magazine that was published between 1944 and 1950, and that was considered to be one of the most prominent magazines in post-war Poland. Its widespread reach and open attitude towards culture that was reflected in “Odrodzenie” (contrary to Marxist approach represented in “Kuźnica”) influenced opinion-forming processes greatly and also shaped new literary canon. It was edited by Karol Kuryluk followed by Jerzy Borejsza — both editors had been genuinely involved in French culture since youth, hence the presence of writers and artists from that circle was explicit. Considering the amount of texts, “Odrodzenie” consisted mostly of Russian literature and also of French literature, that, having more artistic value, was ahead of English and Italian writings. Those proportions were also influenced by Aragon, Picasso and Eluard who were leftist and who were close friends with Kuryluk and Borejsza. Those connections were natural for both editors and they confirmed particular place that Poland took on the verge of Western and Eastern cultures. The transition that started to happen around 1948 and the processes that inhibited artistic freedom lead to a shift in the attitude towards Western culture which also included French culture. The beginning of Social Realism terminated artistic freedom and ended the publishing of “Odrodzenie” that was then perceived as too liberal. The magazine had printed classic writings by authors such as Diderot, Hugo, then-forgotten symbolists such as Verlaine, Rimbaud, and also by current writers that were gradually recognized in Polish culture.

„Czy mogę o sobie powiedzieć: jestem Żydówką?” O Rodzinnej historii lęku Agaty Tuszyńskiej

Author(s): Natalia Żórawska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2015

The aim of the article is to interpret Rodzinna historia lęku (Family history of anxiety) by Agata Tuszyńska from the perspective of Holocaust literature. Tuszyńska, as a post-Holocaust generation writer, addresses autobiographical themes closely related to the Holocaust. This issue is approached from the perspective of an adult woman who bears the stigma of the Holocaust. As a representative of the second generation, she did not experience the war, but she still feels its effects inherited from her mother. The author demonstrates that both in terms of form and content post-trauma is a key aspect for the interpretation of the text. The article is thus an attempt to outline the issues of women’s Holocaust prose based on Agata Tuszyńska’s book, and include it in trauma studies and contemporary literary reflection on the Holocaust.

„Da wär’s halt gut, wenn man Englisch könnt!“ Robert Gilbert, Hermann Leopoldi i rola języków między wygnaniem a powrotem

Author(s): Joachim Schlör / Language(s): Polish Issue: 29/2014

Robert Gilbert (b. Robert David Winterfeld, 1899–1978) was one of Germany’s most successful writers of popular songs, many of them made famous by operettas and movies in the late years of the Weimar Republic (Ein Freund, ein guter Freund; Liebling, mein Herz läßt Dich grüßen; Was kann der Sigismund dafür?). In 1933, Gilbert emigrated to Vienna and later moved on to Paris, 1938, and New York, 1939. After his return to Europe in 1951, Gilbert started a second, again very successful, career as translator of American Musical Comedies, from My Fair Lady (1951) via Oklahoma or Annie Get Your Gun to Cabaret (1970). During his years in New York, he had acquired the English language he needed for this new activity. Recently discovered documents – manuscripts donated to the Vienna City Library by the Leopoldi family – give an insight into the translatory workshop and into the conditions of exile: Gilbert, together with the piano artist Hermann Leopoldi (1888–1959), produced a large number of songs, many of which were written in a mixture of German and English, with language (problems) as their subject. This paper traces Gilbert’s life and work, his translations and his thoughts on translation. The discussion focuses on the role of returning exiles as mediating agents and cultural translators between American (popular) culture and post-War Germany and Austria.

„Das deutsche Danzig”. Niemieckojęzyczne dokumenty życia społecznego o charakterze turystycznym jako narzędzie kreowania pamięci lokalnej

Author(s): Izabela Olszewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 14/2018

Local memory is a type of common memory and originates from memory studies. It defines a group’s memory, as it is ascribed to specific members of a community, specific places and time. Social life documents are carriers of popular information on specific memory places (i.e. places in a given regional space, as well as events, characters, artefacts) of a given region. From the point of view of time lapsing apart from a medium of communication they become a medium of local memory. The aim of the article is to analyse texts of social life documents referring to tourism as a medium creating local identity in the period of the Free City of Gdansk.

„Dawniej myślałem rzeczy uczynić szalone”. Kilka uwag o idei „Dzieł zebranych” Juliusza Słowackiego

Author(s): Jacek Brzozowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2009

A general outline of the editorial concept of a ‘collected works’ edition, to be possibly adequate to our today’s knowledge of the poet and, as a priority, comprising the entire oeuvre of the Polish Bard (no such complete edition of works by Słowacki has appeared till this very day). Discussed herein are: the overall assumptions of the project, defined as it is as a ‘popular-critical’ edition (with a strong emphasis on ‘critical’); the edition’s content; the arrangement of works (incl. problems concerning ‘original’ alternative redactions); the scope and character of accompanying critical apparatus (notes on the text; dating remarks; variants; editors’ explanatory notes/footnotes).

„Deklaracja niezależności" Jarosława Mogutina: wizja bez szans na spełnienie

Author(s): Grzegorz Ojcewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: IX/2007

Slava Mogutin’s Declaration o f Independence is a drastic evidence of permanent culturalcrisis. It is a diagnostic and prognostic text at the same time, because it indicates the ways ofgetting out of the spiritual emptiness - a typical sign of modern civilizations. Total consumptionismfights everything that gets into its way, neutralizes human protest against the destruction oftradition and universal values.

„Der Demiurg ist ein Zwitter“ – Ein Interpretationsversuch des Romans Die andere Seite von Alfred Kubin

Author(s): Ramóna Bódi / Language(s): German Issue: 4/2014

„Der Dritte Raum“ als Aushandlungsort des postsowjetischen Traumas. Zu Migrationsromanen von Julya Rabinowich „Spaltkopf“ und Lena Gorelik „Die Listensammlerin“

Author(s): Anna Rutka / Language(s): German Issue: 27/2018

“Spaltkopf” (2008) by Julya Rabinovich and “Die Listensammlerin” (2013) by Lena Gorelick belong to migrant novels in which cultural signs creatively cross both at the level of inter-character relationships, and at the level of aesthetics. The essay analyses the two texts comparing how they productively collide and confront Russian, Soviet and German cultures and how they construct their contemporary protagonists as representatives of younger generations facing family traumas of the past. The article focuses on the employed aesthetic techniques which result from the mutual interpenetration of cultures and whose meaning is interpreted after Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of hybridisation.

„Der Rede interieur“. Zur Frage der Intra- und Intertextualität in Oswald Eggers Poem „Herde der Rede“

Author(s): Eleonore De Felip / Language(s): German Issue: 3/2011

This essay analyses and reflects upon the numerous intra- andintertextual references in Oswald Egger’s long poem “Herde der Rede”(1999). The recourse to prior literary models in terms of surprising reversalsof form and content, self-quotations as well as reversals of his own figuresof speech are counted among Egger’s distinctive poetic strategies. Alert −like a widely open ear – to voices from different religious and poeticaltraditions, the text perceives, integrates and plays with different poeticregisters and language worlds (such as the Song of Solomon, the ancientCorpus Hermeticum, Hesiod, Vergil, Hölderlin, Rilke …). “Herde derRede” is a highly dialogic and polyphonic text (in the sense used by M. M.Bakhtin). Ultimately, quotations, repetitions and reversals become strategiesof a poetic discourse which uses literary and religious traditions as subtextsfor a metapoetic speech.

„Die kann lesen wie eine Hexe“ . Sprachobsession, Kunstkonzeptionen und Politik bei Joseph von Sonnenfels und Friedrich Schlegel

Author(s): Cornelia Eșianu / Language(s): German Issue: 19/2019

Der Schwerpunkt des Beitrags gilt dem Versuch einer überblicksartigen Durchleuchtung des kulturellen Verhältnisses von Joseph von Sonnenfels und Friedrich Schlegel auf den Ebenen von Sprache, Kunst und Politik und deren möglichen Wechselbeziehungen. Von Bedeutung für das Zusammentreffen des Deutschen mit dem Österreicher dürfte das Jahr 1812 gewesen sein, von dem ausgehend in diesem Beitrag die Analyse der kulturellen Gegenüberstellung der beiden Persönlichkeiten startet, deren Werk in der Regel unterschiedlichen literaturgeschichtlichen Epochen – Aufklärung und Romantik – zugeordnet wird. Dabei wird festgehalten, dass dieser Analyse die permanenten, wenn auch oppositionellen, mitunter doch konträren Kunstüberlegungen in Theorie und Praxis (Literatur, bildende wie darstellende Kunst) beider Autoren vorausgehen.

„Die Wahrheit ist den Kindern zumutbar“ – Schuld und Bekenntnis in Gudrun Pausewangs geschichtserzählendem Kinderund Jugendbuch Ich war dabei Geschichten gegen das Vergessen

Author(s): Marijana Jeleč / Language(s): German Issue: 3/2019

Abstract: The author of the article analyses the historical book for children and teenagers Ich war dabei. Geschichten gegen das Vergessen (2004) by Gudrun Pausewang and focuses on the problem of presenting history, recognizing and admitting guilt in the context of contemporary literature for children and teenagers. The author examines in what way and for what purpose the topic of national socialism and holocaust is introduced into the literature. She demonstrates that literature for children and teenagers can also be a genre that makes it possible to deal with national socialism and can contribute to the political education of children and youngsters. The stories subjected to analysis address traditional patterns of guilt suppression and show how children and teenagers approach the propagation of Nazi ideology. Pausewang points with her stories to the individual and collective importance of settling accounts with the past in books for children.

„Dla jednych trutką, a dla innych karmą” – kontestacja w tekstach polskiego hip-hopu

Author(s): Michał Żmuda / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2014

The article deals with the topic of contestation in hip-hop songs. The author goes through historical sources that have created hip-hop and notices that this subculture has been built upon cultural tradition of contestation. This fact allows to include hip-hop in a wider aspect. The analysis of selected examples shows how the subculture in question creates the image and the concept of power. The author observes that the hip-hop subject defines social reality as a cause of imprisonment. The study of rappers’ textual self-creations allows to deduce that they claim to know the only path to freedom. As a result, hip-hop culture is constructed around the dichotomy, exemplified in a division into “us” and “them”. The author detects that hip-hop songs use propaganda language and war stylizations, thus they foreshadow and fight for a total reformation of power scheme.

„Dom z facjatą” Antoniego Czechowa – historia o upadku ideałów szlacheckich

Author(s): Aleksandra Kołodziejczak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 9/2017

“The House with an Attic” – a short story published in 1896 – took its place in the philosophical and historical discourse at the turn of the 19th century. It is a story of the decline of the “nest of gentlefolk” ideal, the ultimate destruction of the nobility. It is a psychological study of a painter who is a vain man, not interested in physical work. His views change when he meets Zhenya. His new ideals and views, however, turn out to be a mere fantasy, as they are confronted with Zhenya’s independent sister, Lydia. The main character realizes that grand ideas will not persist in the Russian reality. Lydia Volchaninov’s character expresses Anton Chekhov’s protest against hypocritical behaviour of Russian intelligentsia which took part in the implementation of so-called “small actions” program.

„Dom” jako kategoria rozmyta w opowieści „Żywy towar” A. P. Czechowa

Author(s): Artur Sadecki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 9/2017

The article is devoted to the way a category of ‘house’ functions in a short story ‘A Living Chattel’ by A.P. Chekhov. Since this literary work comes from the first part of Chekhov’s creative activity, the author mostly in an ironic way scrutinizes the problems of domestic hearth. There are three houses – a city house, a dacha and a country estate where the story of love triangle takes place. In the first house, the relationship between a married couple withers when the lover steps in. At the dacha, the lovers try to create their own domestic hearth but they fail. Paradoxically, in the third house being the country estate, a husband, his wife and her lover live peacefully under one roof. Chekhov creates a new vision of a house, which can be referred to as a peripheral element of a prototypical category ‘house’. Hence, the author identifies the symbol of changes which take place in the life of his contemporary families and which are reflected in the literature of those days.

„Doświadczenie podmiotu” i „muzyczna melancholia” – o dwóch wierszach Witolda Wirpszy

Author(s): Martyna Mizerkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 5/2015

"Experience of the subject" and "musical melancholy" are the two most important aspects of Witold Wirpsza's early creativity. Poems from 1945 – Rhythm and Koncert, should be interpreted in the context of another poem from the volume Mały gatunek – Wierszopisarstwo, in which the poet searches for suitable means to express his emotions. The most important elements of musical work - rhythm and melody - are a paradigm for Wirpsza. He treats them in an innovative way - an individual can externalize their emotions with their help. An attempt to describe feelings allows an indivudual to free themself from fear. The individual finds internal balance, but traumatic experiences mean that melancholy music remains.

„Dosyć nie umiem pisać” Dzienniczek Faustyny Kowalskiej jako wydarzenie piśmienne i tekstowe

Author(s): Piotr Kubkowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2015

The Little Diary of Faustyna Kowalska, a mystic and saint of the Catholic Church, is a frequently translated Polish book, and yet until now its study and scholarly editing has only been undertaken specialists from the Vatican. Kubkowski presents the Little Diary not only as a ‘text,’ but as a testimony of several layers of creative performance, editorial and publishing efforts. Subjected to more or less systematic reworking, copy editing, and supplied with a critical apparatus consisting of introductions, postscripts, chronologies and footnotes, the manuscript becomes a book, emancipating itself, so to say, from the shape given to it by the author. What is more, the very act of creating the entries, rooted as it is in mystical experience, evolves from a ‘struggle’ with the medium towards refined writing forms, constituting what Kubkowski reads as a chain of handwritten ‘events’.

„Drogi czytelniku, kategorycznie oświadczam, że nie jestem pewien”

Author(s): Elżbieta Winiecka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 22/2013

The essay is devoted to Krzysztof Hoffmann book dubitatio o poezji Eugeniusza Tkaczyszyna-Dyckiego [dubitatio on poetry by Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki]. The author discusses the critic’s interpretative strategies, as well as his theoretical and metatheoretical assumptions. The author demonstrates how deconstructionist philosophy influences the modes of reading of poetical languages proposed by the young critic and his critical consciousness shaped by doubt and uncertainty. This distinguishes him from modern scientific strategy (structuralism) that treats interpretation as a way to reach the truth of a work. Hoffmann writes about the difficult, rhetorically sophisticated poetry by Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki, and more specifically, about its early stage before 2005. The story is built around four words: home, friendship, schizophrenia, disbelief. The most important problem, however, is the language of the poetry: its status, problematic referentiality, and difficult link to existence. The author, thus, reads dubitatio as a metaphorical discussion of theory and practice of poetry interpretation in general, and Tkaczyszyn-Dycki’s poetry in particular.

„Drogi promienia”. O biografii i opowiadaniach wspomnieniowych Bronisławy Ostrowskiej

Author(s): Anna Wydrycka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2009

This article discuses some hitherto-unknown facts of the poetess’s biography, based upon recently detected archival materials. The most important one among these – the once famous (by-now-forgotten) so-called Brzezicka’s affair – created a unique situation with which Ostrowska had to struggle in her life and poetic activity, as testified, to recall but a single trait, the specific features of her mother’s portrait comprised in the lyric verse and recollection short-stories. Analysis of the autobiographical discourse of "W starym lustrze" has been enriched with a facts-related resource facilitating the deciphering of the numerous allusions and understatements.

„Drugi Tor” czasopismo literackie okresu międzywojennego – między polityką a literaturą

Author(s): Katarzyna Porębska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2016

Regain of Poland`s independence was an impulse for development of the press, which was a vital tool for political parties and organizations (factions). Mainly, the information and political magazines have been developed. Publishing own magazines were often the only form of public activity for the most contemporary political parties and organizations. In the period of interwar Czestochowa also had its information and political magazines. „Drugi Tor” is included in the political journal and visibly shows the relationship between servant and his Lord. In this article I made the analysis of literary texts that have been published in all six issues of the magazine. They contain a lot of valuable information about the political mood of that time, which undoubtedly influenced on the literature. „Drugi Tor” is a monthly magazine where the strong relationship between literature and politics is presented.

„Durch den Weltkrieg zur neuen Weltkultur“. Periphere Literaturen im deutschen Sprachraum (1914–1918)

Author(s): Paweł Zajas / Language(s): German Issue: 5/2014

The paper analyses the position of peripheral European literatures on the German publishing market during World War I. Statistical information retrieved from the records of publishing houses and advertisements placed in relevant journals confirm the claim that the smaller European literatures were brought to the centre of attention of German publishers and readership between 1914–1918. Moreover, specific books were frequently referred to as ‘Weltliteratur’ (world literature) by the critics and publishers. The term ‘Weltliteratur’ is analysed here in the context of World War I, because of the specific circumstances which contributed to the growing significance of smaller literatures in the German book market at the time.