„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.

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

Author(s): Marta Nadolna-Tluczykont / 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 rzucił butem w pulpit sterowniczy?!”, czyli atom w krzywym zwierciadle humoru (na materiale tekstów polskich, rosyjskich i czeskich)

Author(s): Agnieszka Golebiowska-Suchorska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 01/2017

The article presents an analysis of humorous genres of contemporary Polish, Russianand Czech folklore (jokes, sadistic poems, chastushka), inspired by real or anticipated tragicevents related to the use of nuclear energy. The purpose of comparing the texts in threelanguages was to identify common or different motivations which contributed to writing thetexts of atomic humour in the countries with various degrees of advancement of nuclearweapons. The analysis is based on the texts of jokes (approx. 200) found in the Internet(the Polish, Russian and Czech servers), materials spread through spoken communication,and non-serial publications. The analysis proved that the fear motivating the atomic jokes isnot caused by the fear of the atomic technology itself, but by the fear of irresponsible peopleand irreversibility of their unreasonable actions.

„Mądre tautologie”

Author(s): Giovanna Tamassucci / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 26/2016

This article covers a particular form of Wisława Szymborska conceptism, her Thought fugues, which turns the world’s elements upside down and deconstructs them, uncovering their antinomies. The described reality takes the form of a concatenation, it is elliptic, based on seemingly symmetric tessellations, but in essence triggers some logic turns. It is possible to discern a similarity with advertising rhetoric and its constant variations of sense based on oppositions, such as double meaning, antiphrasis, paradox, or tautology. In all of which Szymborska is able to notice the condensing of meaning, or even some oxymoronic proper- ties. It is perhaps this reason why her poetry is accessible to such a wide audience across the world. Though frequently condemned by 20th-century thinkers as a mere pleonasm, tautology becomes for the poetess a fluid material useful for her dialectics of imagination. Szymborska does not see language as a mirror of the world, but rather as an act of creating new worlds and new forms of life, like Wittgenstein did in his theory of language games. This is why she prefers such word games more than other poets. Due to their dual nature, tautologies constitute a potential and permanent element of Szymborska’s conceptual games.

„Mnie zawsze fascynowały wszelkie powtarzalności”. O topice Zagłady z Janiną Abramowską rozmawia Paweł Wolski

Author(s): Janina Abramowska,Pawel Wolski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2016

„Mogę powiedzieć [...], że jednak – jestem”. Czesława Miłosza sposoby odkrywania siebie

Author(s): Marcin Telicki / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 20/2012

The article discusses the plausibility of Joanna Zach’s concept described as the “poetic of confession”. “Self discovery” is, for Miłosz, related to Romantic and early-Modernist sources of creative expression, and to poetry as a specific confession of faith. This, in turn, assumes an unending tension between biography, immersed in concrete reality, and its textual representation (the truth of life is confronted with the truth of poetry). What follows is that for Miłosz the key category is experience, suspended between history and the present, and between reality and its textual transformation.

„Moment elegijny” Victora Hugo

Author(s): Magdalena Siwiec / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 18/2011

This article attempts to define the place of elegiac modality in the literary output of Victor Hugo. The starting point for the discussion and at the same time appropriate interpretative tool is the definition of elegy derived from the writings of German theoreticians of Romanticism: Friedrich Schiller and Friedrich Schlegel. The thing is question is the elegiac attitude based on exposing of what is ideal and lost at the same time. The above, indeed, constitutes an answer to the questions of the experience of crisis so inherent to Romanticism. Analyses of the early poetical volumes written by the author show a particular evolution of Hugo’s conception of poetry. Politically committed The Odes, being anti-elegiac by assumption, are discussed, as well as purely poetical Eastern poems overtly promoting limitless freedom which characterizes the creative imagination. The interpretation of individual poems from these volumes proves, however, that one can discern a certain elegiac tone in them, though the tone is never dominant. The volume that distinctively enhances the elegy (thus far discredited by Hugo and from then on permanently occurring in his works) turns out to be Autumn Leaves — a collection of poems of contemplative, melancholic, visionary and self-reflective character.

„Mruży oczy noc ormiańska” – wokół metafory ikonicznego losu w poezji Jerzego Ficowskiego

Author(s): Daria Nowicka / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2016

In his work, Jerzy Ficowski – the author of “Odczytanie popiołów”, “Ptak poza ptakiem”, “Demony cudzego strachu” and “Czekanie na sen psa” – concentrates on the borderland in its broad sprectrum. “Tryptyk bizantyjski” – the subject of this study – is a piece in which the author emphasises the need for memory and emphatic writing, which is especially visible in its third part, devoted to Armenian memory. Being a reminder of the tragic history of the forgotten nation, the poem is simultaneously a cry for literary presence and audibility. This cultural, historical and literary borderland, significant in Ficowski’s poetry, appears also in the gesture of rewriting an icon and in the creation of oxymoronic poetry.

„My Daddy Alabama, Momma Louisiana”: queerowe czarownice, okrutni rasiści, makabryczne historie i mit zacofanego Południa USA

Author(s): Grzegorz Stepniak / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 136/2016

Grzegorz Stępniak attempts a queer reading of the South of the US. His analysis functions within the context of the notion metronormativity, coined by Judith “Jack” Halberstam, which refers to the construction of the identity of homosexual people through migrating from rural areas to cities, where they can come out. Stępniak regards rusticity as the basic category used to refer to the American South, determining standards of shaping queer identities that are far removed from urban standards. It is within this context that he analyses, among others, the video clip for Beyoncé's Formation, filmed in New Orleans, Patrick Johnson's book Sweet Tea. Black Gay Men of The South and the performance based on it, the third season of the series American Horror Story and Lee Daniels' The Paperboy.

„Nad morzem miasto biało-błękitne”… Obraz Tel Awiwu w poezji polsko-żydowskiej lat międzywojennych

Author(s): Beata Tarnowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: XV/2013

The subject of the paper is the image of Tel Aviv that emerges from the poetry of thepoets of the Jewish origin but writing in Polish, in the 20’s and the 30’s of the 20th century,especially from the poems of Anda Eker and Maurycy Szymel.In the Palestinian poems of the young poet Anda Eker who was traveling a few timesto Erec Israel, Tel Aviv, showing many Arcadian traits, seems to be the symbol of freedomand safety for the Jews from all over the world. Yet, the poem The Jewish state of MaurycySzymel, depicts that city – a symbol of the future Jewish state and simultaneously themodern Babylon – in the context of the Biblical extermination. The contestation of the urbanutopia that appears in this poems, reflects characteristic for the Jewish Diaspora diversity ofattitudes towards the Zionist idea.

„Najtrudniej opisywać to co najważniejsze”. O Płynie Lugola Bohdana Zadury

Author(s): Danuta Opacka-Walasek / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 19/2012

The starting point for the interpretation of the poem Płyn Lugola, [Lugol’s solution] written by B. Zadura, is the rift between the classical form of the sonnet and the title that prompts the interventionist character of the poem and that indicates journalistic involvement in and the implications of the events in Chernobyl. This in turn leads to identification of further structural tensions and dissonances (in the verse course, at the level of imaging and in shaping the mood of the poem). The descriptive category for the essence of the composition and underlined overtones of the work is the sublime, in particular as it is viewed by modern aesthetics (proposed by Lyotard, Derrida, but also Burke). What surfaces is the microscale of imaging clashed with the macroscale phenomena formalized in lyrical situation, violation of the substance of the world, stability encroached by liquidity. A particularly validated layer of the work is the sound structure of the poem: in the finely and precisely controlled instrumental line, almost equivalent to the anagram, connotes the word “Chernobyl”, though the word is not expressed explicitly in the text. The interpretation intends to prove that the stake here is the articulation of sublimity charged and permeated with a metapoetic reflection – and that “the most important is, at the same time, the most difficult to describe”.

„Nie chodzi o to, czy nienawidzi czy nie. Muzułmanie mu przeszkadzali” – kategoria zakłócenia w narracjach o muzułmanie w literaturze Szoa

Author(s): Dennis Bock / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 25/2015

In the literary recollections of camp survivors the figure of the Muselmann is a recurring motif. The author puts forward a thesis about the existence of a dominating, prototypical narration about a Muselmann, which occurs not only in literary texts but also in scholarly studies. The questioning of the exemplary forms of depicting a Muselmann may lead to irritation and evoke in readers the feeling of “disturbance”. The re-enactment of such disturbances possesses a hidden analytical potential, as it reveals routinized and partly problematic cultural structures of reception and cquisition apparent especially in the context of post-catastrophic narrations and remembrance of the Shoah.

„Nie nazywaj mnie pedałem” – homofobia i homohisteria w prozie Serhija Żadana

Author(s): Mateusz Swietlicki / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 11/2016

The aim of this paper is to present the homophobic and homohysteric discourse in Serhiy Zhadan’sprose. Adopting the perspective of the pro-feminist men and masculinities studies and researchingthe discourse on masculinity in Zhadan’s fiction enables the author to present men in the period oftransformation of the last twenty-five years and show the gradual changes in the dominant attitudetowards gays. Although it is difficult to treat Zhadan’s fiction as a full compendium of knowledgeon the state of Ukrainian homophobia, the author claims that it contains images of masculinityand relationships between men that are accurate literary representations of the changes currentlytaking place in Ukraine.

„Niemowa z Kampen” — Hendrick Avercamp w Archiwum Zbigniewa Herberta

Author(s): Magdalena Sniedziewska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 17/2010

The present article analyses the rough drafts of Zbigniew Herbert’s essay on Hendrik Avercamp — the seventeenth century Dutch landscape painter who specialized in winter landscapes and scenes with numerous tiny figures. The author attempts to reconstruct the compositional idea for the essay and establishes facts concerning the research work done by Herbert concerning the life and work of Avercamp, confronts the findings with the present state of research and considers the issue of the biographical dimension of the painter’s artistic output as one of the keys to solving the interpretative problems of his paintings and the artistic tradition that had influenced the shaping of the Avercamp idiom of paintings. Avercamp’s works are juxtaposed in the article with the landscapes painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder to show the difference between the visions of the world represented by the two painters. Bruegel, in Herbert’s opinion, is bitter in his reflection on the subject of transiency of human existence. Avercamp, conversely, tends to have a cheerful outlook on life, the world and his compatriots. Avercamp’s paintings allow us to get to know winter customs of the Dutch, their winter outdoor games participated by all — hence a thesis posed by the poet underlying the democratic character of skating rinks. In doing so, Herbert proposes to scrutinize carefully Avercamp’s artistic output within the context of, defined after Schiller, the notion of naivety, understood as “the virtue of accepting reality with humility” adopted from the old masters.

„Nigdy więcej!” – historia pewnej utopii

Author(s): Slawomir Buryla / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 25/2015

The author of the article studies the literary and cultural topos “Never more!”. He discusses its social and historical contexts as well as the instrumentalization of the anti-war rhetorics in the period of Peoples’ Republic of Poland (Pol. abbr. PRL). The outline also presents the place of anti-war rhetorics in the modern culture.

„Oddycham więc jestem”. Poezja Julii Fiedorczuk

Author(s): Anna Wegrzyniak / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 09/2016

This essay explores the eco-poetics space of “home”. The anti-Cartesian paraphrase “I breathe, therefore I am” exposes the biochemical, material and energetic aspect of being. By creating an image of the community of all organisms, the poet freely moves from the cosmic towards an intercellular space.

„Odrodziły się traumy z czasów Zagłady”. Marzec 1968 jako narracja postkatastroficzna

Author(s): Anna Artwinska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 25/2015

The article discusses select literary images and presentations of March 1968, which are treated as an example of a postcatastrophic narration. The author states that the events of the years 1967-1968 are often depicted in Polish literature as a kind of a “recurring catastrophe” – predicting an event of the calibre of the Holocaust. Similarities and parallels can be noticed on the artistic level (ways of representation) and ideological (judgement of events). Consequently, the catastrophe does not fulfil its cathartic function and does not become a breakthrough, instead its characteristic features are repetitions and new configurations. Finally, the author asks whether, and to what extent, Polish remembrance of March overlaps with the remembrance of the Holocaust, and to what degree the struggle with anti-Semitism in 1967-1968 was simultaneously a struggle with anti-Semitism during WWII.

„Operowość” Czerwonego marszu Karola Huberta Rostworowskiego

Author(s): Monika Ziemba / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2015

The article discusses the subject matter of filiations between literature and music. It is an attempt to look at one of the later works of Karol Hubert Rostworowski, namely, Czerwony marsz [The Red March], through the prism of operatic conventions. The point of departure for the considerations above is an article by Piotr Strugała and the term “operatics” adopted by him, utilized in reference to the play under analysis. In Rostworowski’s drama, operatic conventions are revealed at the level of structure, subject matter, as well as semantics of the work. The first one is the architectural form of the play, i.e. division into three preludes and the eponymous Red March. The “operatics” is also evidenced by such elements as: presence of solo and ensemble parts, partially corresponding to arias, recitatives and choral parts; dancing parts; leitmotifs; marching rhythms; as well as spectacularity and impressiveness.

„Po ilu patykach zanika etyka?” O politycznych i metafizycznych horyzontach epigramatyki Wacława Klejmonta

Author(s): Tomasz Zurawlew / Language(s): Polish / Issue: XIV/2012

The present paper aims at an analysis of the axiological paradigm in the satirical outputof Wacław Klejmont, a poet, essayist and literary critic, locally well known in the culture ofthe Polish Warmia and Masuria. The author attempts to set a broader context of the epigramsand specifically focuses on their theological aspects that have not yet been so well exposed inthe Polish aphoristic literature.

„Pokazać, że jesteś kobietą”. Konflikty o wygląd partnerki w małżeństwach polsko-rosyjskich

Author(s): Tatiana Busygina-Wojtas / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 11/2016

Partners in Polish-Russian couples have different opinions concerning women’s appearence.Stressing femininity and paying much attention to attractiveness of a female-partner seems to bevery important to Russian partners of both sexes. In this paper, this phenomenon is analyzed fromtwo perspectives. The gender perspective pays special attention to the diversities in the evolutionof partiarchal model in Poland and Russia. The analysis from the perspective of cultural anthropologyleads to the conclusion about manifestation of Russian identity in Polish-Russian relations.Concidering “femininity” an important category and laying a metaphysical emphasis on it seemsto be one of the ways of the “being Russian” manifestation.