„Két mondat közé zárja magát a világ”

Danyi Magdolna korai költészetének beszédmódozatai

Author(s): Dorottya Fehér / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 4/2014

The aim of this essay is to map the most prominent features of Magdolna Danyi’s early volume, Sötéttiszta (1975). I propose some possible interpretations which have not been put forth yet. I highlight thematic-motivic correspondences and the poet’s exploration of the objective world’s defining components. Further, I reflect on the ways in which the various modes of poetic diction exhibited in the volume might fit into contemporary Hungarian lyric poetry. Finally, I consider the dialogic nature of Danyi’s poetry, and try to address the problem of the subject’s self-divisive processes. If we are to create an accurate picture of Magdolna Danyi’s early approach to poetry, we have to study her special diction, which aspires to objectivity and subjectivity at the same time.

„Kiedyś całą tę powieść Ci opowiem”. Listy Zygmunta Krasińskiego w perspektywie narratologicznej

Author(s): Magdalena Krawczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2013

The article proposes to look at the correspondence of Zygmunt Krasiński from the perspective of narratology. The starting point for the discussion is Paul Ricoeur’s thesis, according to which the transfer of his own existence can be overcome only by developing the appropriate framework for the story. The poet, therefore, is presented here as homo narrator, who, with the help of cultural codes derived from literature, consciously builds his portraits in his letters. The examination material is excerpts from Krasiński’s correspondence with Delfina Potocka, Henry Reeve, and Adam Soltan – on this basis, the subsequent roles adopted by the narrator are presented. The figure of an old man, bodily ruins, and Werther and Hamlet’s costumes are only exemplary forms of the narrative, created by the poet, talking about himself to correspondents. In the light of the article, the poet appears as 'homo legens', endowed with immense erudition, reaching for specific schemes in order to rationalize his own experience. The conclusions drawn from the text also allow one to distance oneself from the opinions found in literature concerning the correspondence of the poet – treating autocreation already there as a manifestation of romantic dandyism and buffoonery.

„Klin” Tuwima: strategie przeżycia polsko-żydowskiego poety

Author(s): Giovanna Tomassucci / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2014

Tuwim’s approach to the “Jewish question” has already been analyzed by Polish and foreign scholars. The article is intended to consider some “survival strategies” of the Polish poet from a slightly different angle. In Poland, in the period between the wars Jewish writers were persuaded to accept total polonization and a rejection of their ethnic identity; yet, at the same time they often suffered rejection from the circles of Polish artists. Any attempt of highlighting their Jewish identity or even a slight interest in Jewish culture incited brutal Jew-bashings. Tuwim considered his being a Polish Jew not only as a fact to be proud of, but also as an opportunity for engaging with self-criticism. He painfully felt the Jewish question as “a powerful wedge cleaving [his own] worldview”. However, like many other Polish-Jewish writers he masked its enduring presence in his own psyche, constructing his public persona through a process of self-fashioning. This paper tries to follow the traces of this “wedge” in Tuwim’s works: from poems supposedly having nothing to do with the “Jewish question”, to encrypted allusions to the great Yiddish writers, from his relentless questioning of all forms of intolerance and nationalist rhetoric, to his conviction that a new poetic language could “reform the world” and become a homeland for all readers regardless of their nationality.

„Kochany (Panie) Janku...” – listy Jolanty Fuchsówny do Jana Brzękowskiego

Author(s): Iwona Boruszkowska,Aleksander Wójtowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2019

Published here are two letters by a woman writer and publicist Jolanta Fuchsówna (1899–1944) from the year 1935 to Jan Brzękowski, which are found in the archive unit of the poet’s correspondence of The Polish Library in Paris. The essential part of the study is an attempt to reconstruct Fuchsówna’s biography.

„Kolęda, Nowe Lato i Szczodry Dzień” — geneza, rozwój i schyłek gatunku w XVII wieku

Author(s): Michał Kuran / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2014

The article is proving that works arisen from the tradition of wishing carol, in which titles appeared a formula „Carol, The New Year and the Generous Day”, constitute a separate literary genre. What is more, works, which belong to it could exist in two forms: unified and cyclical. The genesis of the genre is regarded to appear in combining into one group the motives and symbols of the Christian holidays (from the Christmas through the Circumcision / the New Year to the Epiphany). These types of lyrics were printed from the very beginning to the half of the 17th century. The article therefore is creating the profile of dozen texts saved to our times.

„Komuniści (nie) mają ojczyzny...” Wanda Wasilewska jako polska (anty)bohaterka narodowa

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

The paper offers an analysis of a number of biographies of Wanda Wasilewska, written in different historical periods. An attempt was made to reconstruct the mechanisms that governed the functioning of Wanda Wasilewska’s communist figure in the Polish political discourse; explain how she was perceived by the society, and how it altered in the course of the Polish cultural and historical transformations. A biography of an individual gains coherence as a result of the community’s search for its identity: it serves as a building block for a coherent biography of the entire community. The writing and rewriting of the biography of Wasilewska has long been a kind of “production of communism” in Poland, and communism has been one of the most important aspects of Polish identity in the recent decades.

„Konstantynku, drogi synku…” Niderlandzkie piśmiennictwo dla dzieci i o dzieciach do końca XVII wieku

Author(s): Piotr Oczko / Language(s): Polish Issue: 28/2016

The aim of the given paper is to describe the changes that occurred in the Netherlandish (i.e. Dutch and Flemish) juvenile texts from the Middle Ages up to the end of the 17th century. The introductory remarks focus upon the methodological issues, such as defining the child and its age in the past and the questions concerning the ‘identity’ and possible forms of old literature/ writings aimed for children. In the Netherlands, up to the end of the 16th century, children, were mostly the addressees of the numerous schoolbooks, both Latin and vernacular ones. The revolt against the Spanish rule (1555) resulted in the division of the Netherlands into the Catholic South and the Calvinistic-minded North, namely the Dutch Republic. Whereas in the southern provinces the shape and form of the juvenile writings remained practically unchanged, in the North the publishing market for children grew rapidly, greatly stimulated by the rise of the common education in the Republic, spectacular increase of literacy and the social advancement of the country, based upon the Protestant faith and economical progress. Within few decades young Dutch readers from the North, boys and girls alike, were able to choose from a considerable publishing offer, designed not only for instruction but also for pleasure. Finally, the multitude of representations of children in the 17th century Dutch literature and their contexts (emblem books, conventional didactic and vanitas texts, more personal confessions) have been briefly suggested in the paper.

„Konstantynku, drogi synku…” Niderlandzkie piśmiennictwo dla dzieci i o dzieciach do końca XVII wieku

Author(s): Piotr Oczko / Language(s): Polish Issue: 27/2016

The aim of the given paper is to describe the changes that occurred in the Netherlandish (i.e. Dutch and Flemish) juvenile texts from the Middle Ages up to the end of the 17th century. The introductory remarks focus upon the methodological issues, such as defining the child and its age in the past and the questions concerning the ‘identity’ and possible forms of old literature/ writings aimed for children. In the Netherlands, up to the end of the 16th century, children, were mostly the addressees of the numerous schoolbooks, both Latin and vernacular ones. The revolt against the Spanish rule (1555) resulted in the division of the Netherlands into the Catholic South and the Calvinistic-minded North, namely the Dutch Republic. Whereas in the southern provinces the shape and form of the juvenile writings remained practically unchanged, in the North the publishing market for children grew rapidly, greatly stimulated by the rise of the common education in the Republic, spectacular increase of literacy and the social advancement of the country, based upon the Protestant faith and economical progress. Within few decades young Dutch readers from the North, boys and girls alike, were able to choose from a considerable publishing offer, designed not only for instruction but also for pleasure. Finally, the multitude of representations of children in the 17th century Dutch literature and their contexts (emblem books, conventional didactic and vanitas texts, more personal confessions) have been briefly suggested in the paper.

„Kontakt intelektualny z Państwem obojgiem na odległość daje mi [...] wiele radości”

Listy Teodora Parnickiego do Teresy i Sławomira Cieślikowskich z lat 1961–1966

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

In the broad collection of Teodor Parnicki’s letters to Teresa and Sławomir Cieślikowscy from the 1960s we observe the intellectualists’ gradually forming transcontinental friendship. The prose writer, while staying on emigration in Mexico, was detached from readers but eager to contact them, whereas Teresa Cieślikowska, connected with the University of Łódź, worked at that time on her doctoral dissertation (ultimately a book) on Parnicki’s creativity. Sławomir Cieślikowski, a distinguished Orientalist (Indian scholar), was also a careful reader of Parnicki’s novels, and traces of this reading can also be found in the letters in question. Since the period for the correspondents was a time of intense activity, their letters are pithy: they refer mainly to issues connected to literature and history. Owing to that, they become an important source text.

„Konwencje” i „inwencje” – kultura popularna i media jako przestrzeń badań porównawczych

Author(s): Marcin Telicki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 7/2016

The main aim of the article is to indicate the manners in which changing models of culture transmission influence literature reception. It is assumed that there is nothing radically traditional and nothing radically new in contemporary culture: media and mass culture combine conventions and inventions for their own purposes. Therefore“new comparative literature” involves “new reading” and “new teaching” that includes not only books, but also film adaptations, graphic novels or YouTube (and similar) video presentations. Arguments for and against popular culture – a still life academic debate – are presented in the article.

„Królewska duma z wielkiej niepomyślności”. Doświadczenie emigracji w poetyckiej perspektywie Lwa Gomolickiego

Author(s): Jolanta Brzykcy / Language(s): Polish Issue: XXI/2016

The paper discusses the functioning of emigration theme in the poetry of Leo Gomolitzky(1903-1988) - one of the greatest representative of Russian diaspora in Poland before World WarII. Some poetical texts and two poems (Warsaw, The emigre poem) has been analized in it, in thecontext of bilingualism, exterritoriality and biculturalism - categories, that had a strong influenceon Gomolitzky’s life and works.In the analized texts Gomolitzky shows his own experiences and thoughts caused by theemigration, he also diagnoses people’s attitudes toward exile. From the viewpoint of the poet theemigration is, undoubtedly, the catastrophe, but at the same time Gomolitzky interpretates it as a chanceof the moral renewal, spiritual rebirth.

„Krzemienieckie smutki” – poetyckie reakcje na śmierć Alojzego Felińskiego

Author(s): Magdalena Patro-Kucab / Language(s): Polish Issue: 71/2016

The article addresses issues pertaining to the laudatory works. The author is interestedin the manner the nineteenth-century poets looked at the figure of Alojzy Feliński —a poet, reformer, husband, father and friend, and thus, the manner they perceived himboth in the public and private sphere. The following poems have been adopted as thebasis for considerations: Konstanty Piotrkowski’s Oda na śmierć Alojzego Felińskiego,Wincenty Turski’s Do cieniów Alozjego Felińskiego, Tymon Zaborowski’s WestchnieniePodolanina, mieszkańca gór miodoborskich, po śmierci Alojzego Felińskiego, and GrzegorzIgnacy Szadbeja’s Elegia na śmierć Felińskiego. The conducted analysis and interpretationare intended not only to depict the portrait of Feliński as presented by the nineteenthcenturypoets, but also became an attempt to contain the discussed works in the sphere ofa new type of laudatory poems. For we obtain an example of a noble model correspondingwith the new manner of understanding the artist and the citizen that has contributedto the national culture and education. The authors of the poems, faithful to the classicor sentimental trend, emphasize the qualities of Feliński (diligence, talent, pragmatismand service to society), that are worthy of public praise. The primary purpose of theundertaken considerations is to demonstrate the changes occurring in the field of poeticsand rhetoric of laudatory works, which are a kind of poetic tribute within the category ofdidactic approval of the Enlightenment period, as an instrument forming personal modelsand inspiring positively valorized social behaviors.

„Książka nieufności”. O Rosji Czesława Miłosza

Author(s): Marek Wedemann / Language(s): Polish Issue: 20/2012

The article is a review of an extensive, two-volume collection of Miłosz’s statements entitled Rosja. Widzenia transoceaniczne [Russia: Tran­soceanic Views]. The reviewer, apart from a standard presentation and evaluation of the published work, attempts to discover a deeper sense of the decision to publish, “here and now”, Miłosz’s statements on Russian issues. The collection, which rounds up previously unknown texts written between 1936 and 2004, makes it possible to understand Miłosz’s writings on Russia as a continuation of Marian Zdziechowski’s essays written between the wars, where uncompromising denunciation of the “Eastern peril” was combined with deep respect and sympathy for a Russia that was not imperial.

„Książka zła” – edukacyjne funkcje czasopism katolickich w II Rzeczypospolitej na przykładzie periodyków diecezji katowickiej (prolegomena)

Author(s): Bogumiła Warząchowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2018

In the inter-war period, the press constituted the most popular means of the formation of public opinion. The periodical-related tradition in Upper Silesia was deeply rooted in the culture of this region. A systematic habit of reading encouraged the bishops of Katowice to promote Catholic books and the press. Owing to the current press releases one familiarised the readers with the recently published material and with the means of purchasing and distributing the press, as well as one provided information about recommending reading. The diocesan press provided information about pernicious literature and warned against the reading of primitive sensational literature, love stories and pornographic materials, as well as the literature which radically opposed the Catholic faith, morality and mores.

„Książki dla młodzieży […] powinny przedstawiać […] czuły mechanizm walki klasowej”. Szczecińskie Plenum Zarządu Głównego Związku Literatów Polskich, sierpień 1951 r.

Author(s): Marta Nadolna-Tłuczykont / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2016

The article is an attempt at showing the situation of literature for children and youth during the first years after the conclusion of World War II. Based on the materials from the Szczecin Plenum of the Principal Board of Polish Writers, which was held in August 1951, the views of the political leadership on the literature for youth were outlined. These tendencies, with certain changes and varying intensity, continued throughout the Polish People’s Republic period.

„Kto skosztuje, wie, co to za smaki duchowne są”. Obrazowanie o charakterze sensualnym w podręczniku medytacji na przykładzie „Elementarzyka ćwiczenia duchownego” Mikołaja z Mościsk

Author(s): Katarzyna Kaczor-Scheitler / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2014

The purpose of this article is to present, based on the second part of the „Manual of Spiritual Exercise” (Elementarzyk ćwiczenia duchownego, Kraków 1626) by Mikołaj of Mościska (1559–1632), the role of stylistic literary devices in the description of meditative mechanisms and the results of this experience — the inner transformation of Man, and the experience of closeness to and unification with God. The author will also draw attention to the significance of senses in the cognitive process, and consequently imagination, enabling one to picture the images contained in metaphors. The category of perceptibility, which is accentuated in the text, served to present objects and phenomena in a “realistic” manner. Thus, focus will be placed on the imaging tools through which the 17th century author attempted to draw metaphysical matters closer to the reader’s senses.

„Kwestia żydowska” w literaturze religijnej. Analiza treści modlitewnika Machzor li-Jom Kipur

Author(s): Agata Rybińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2018

The analysis of the prayer contained in the Hebrew-Russian prayer book allows to describe the linguistic image of God and his people — Israel/Jews. Appealing to the patriarchs, to the covenant between God and Israel, to the Torah, Jerusalem and temple worship, that is, the centuries-long Jewish religious tradition, are cultural codes, and at the same time key components of Jewish identity. They are a point of reference in considering so called the Jewish question, taking into account primarily the Jewish perspective, not the Christian one.

„Lamentował Dawid żałobną pieśnią nad Saulem i Jonatanem, jego synem” — egzegeza 2 Sm 1,17–27 jako biblijnego przykładu trenu

Author(s): Janusz Nawrot / Language(s): Polish Issue: 18/2011

The elegy in question presents and expresses in a poetic way the depth of feelings of a grieving man who suffers from the loss of his closest friends. The elegy belongs to the most illustrious achievements of early Hebrew lyric poetry and though it does not include distinct religious references in itself, it has to be understood within the context of the entire theology of the Old Testament that places God in the very centre of the life of the rulers of Israel and its people. The defeat in the battle so lamented in the Book by David himself is shown not as accidental or as a normal flow of things, but as part of God’s plan that, ultimately and paradoxically, helps the future king of Israel conquer his enemies and ascend to the throne. A characteristic feature of the lamentation is an exclusively favourable presentation of the main protagonists so that due honour, reverence and glory can be rendered to them. Therefore, the only way to treat the song is to consider it as one that expresses grief and mourning over the deceased, and not as a historically reliable review of their life. The way the lives of heroes is presented makes it possible to draw conclusions for the audience that may be important and may shape individual lives and their future progress. Undoubtedly, this is how David viewed his song to be delivered to the audience, as well: his access to rule the country was partly the result of the sacrifice paid by the two heroes slain in the battle.

„Latine loquor!” – czyli „żywa łacina” jako metoda dydaktyczna

Author(s): Marcin Loch / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2015

This article discusses the various problems one faces as a teacher of Latin in Poland. These problems arepartly due to the permanently decreasing number of Latin lessons in schools. This decrease, however, has notbeen considered by those responsible for the core curriculum, which is now too extensive and does not matchthe amount of time provided for Latin classes. The lack of reform in the didactics of Latin also takes its toll(namely the continuous usage of the grammar-translation method). Direct methods, which include dr. Rouse’smethod, Ørberg’s method and Assimil method (all discussed briefly in this article) could prove to be a usefulsolution to these problems.

„Letzte Gespräche“ als geistliches und theologisches „Testament“ von Joseph Ratzinger / Benedikt XVI

Author(s): Rafał Biniek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2017

The article present select theologically relevant statements from the book “Last Testament” of Benedict XVI and comment them in the context of his former theological works. With the reflections on the central place of the faith and on the Office of Peter as well as some eschatological thoughts is won a spiritual and theological testament of the great theologian and pope.