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In the article I wonder about the reasons for the growing popularity of the postapocalypticworks in the pop culture of the early 21st century. The world after the collapseof the Western civilization is created in various literary, film and photographic forms, theexamples of which I present in my study. The alternative post-apocalyptic reality is the postindustrialreality, archaized and non-anthropocentric. The technological regress presented inthe works is based on imaginings of the end and is analogous to the fall of humanity amongthose people who survived after the “end” or were born afterwards. In the post-apocalypticworks of the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries it can be noticed that the authors of the visionof world “after to end” abandoned an extremely negative tone.
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The article discusses the issue of development of views on an atomic bomb and a nuclearwar created by scientists, politicians, military commanders, as well as civilian strategists,starting from the vision of an atomic bomb as a herald of the New Deal, social and political,till the American military plans of a nuclear attack on hundreds of targets in the Soviet Union. The aim of the study is to demonstrate that the nuclear revolution which involvednot only to military matters, but also strategy, international policy or war ethics was primarilylinked to, apart from new technology, the idea of the future nuclear war and how its range,course and consequences were imagined.
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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.
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The aim of the article is to analyse a short story by Franz Kafka In the Penal Colony(In der Strafkolonie). At the beginning, the circumstances surrounding the creation of thenovel were described. After that the images of the colonizers (Officer, Explorer) andthe colonized (Condemned, Soldier) were presented. Thereafter, the process of justice andmechanism of execution – the use of an elaborate torture device that carves the sentenceof the prisoner on his skin – were interpreted. In the last part of the article the attitude ofKafka towards process of decolonization was described.
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The study is devoted to personological analysis of the one-hundred-poem collectionentitled Vade-mecum by Cyprian Norwid in the light of advanced and, above all, multidimensionalresearch on the personology of the subject of creative activities of EmilyDickinson’s poems. Based to a large extent on Robert Weisbuch’s complex terminology fromthe canonical volume Emily Dickinson’s Poetry, using his typology of lyrical personas, theresearcher on Norwid gains important, additional comparative literature tool allowing, e.g.the juxtaposition alongside each other of the types of poetry written by Norwid, Dickinsonand Baudelaire (Norwid’s and Dickinson’s lyrical persona is – it seems – a mixture ofa “wounded dialectician” and “engaging sufferer”, Baudelaire’s persona is, in turn, themarriage of features of an “engaging sufferer” and “withdrawn bard”). This is how the premodernist“theatre of personas” is created, the stronger that – which I am trying to emphasizein this text – despite appearances, it is possible to find similarities in the poetic languagebetween the works of Norwid and Dickinson. In the same way, Norwid and Dickinson – inorder to build their lyric – use a poetic function in the Jakobsonian sense: on the one hand,they strengthen and intensify its impact, on the other hand, they use it to “cover up” thephenomenon of linguistic disintegration of the world for which Modernist lyric poetryserved in a special way as a detector, a kind of litmus paper.
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The author proposes a reflection on discovering the poet with regard to his creationor construction. This issue is discussed on the example of Emily Dickinson’s works whichwere published only after her death and were not prepared for print by the author herself.In the light of the latest research on the material dimension of her legacy (starting fromVirginia Jackson’s study Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading from 2005 to therecently published collection The Gorgeous Nothings. Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems),it appears that many of Dickinson’s works were not written in a form that could be recognizedas poetic at first glance. A large part was preserved only in notebooks, loose sheets coveredwith handwriting written in continuo or at odd angles, in a manner adapted to the format ofa given scrap of paper, usually a free fragment of a recycled envelope or a torn-off cornerof a piece of paper used previously for a different purpose. These texts had to be recognizedthen by discoverers as poems, and then copied and edited in a way consistent with whatwas considered lyric poetry in the era. Some of them were then rejected as not falling intothe category of poetry and included in the opus of the American only by later researchers.Others, in the first editions treated as poems with time were excluded by historians ofliterature from this collection. Contrary to the provocative title, the aim of the article isnot to answer the question about the status of the texts left by Dickinson. Instead, the authorreflects on the poetic criteria ascribed to her works by the first and subsequent readers.
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The article presents the literary descriptions of dreams, which were publishedin the Russian periodicals of the Enlightenment period: 1. The happy society:a dream by Alexander Sumarokov (“Trudolubivaya pchela”, 1759), 2. A dream bySergey Domashnev (“Poleznoye uveselenye”, 1761), 3. A dream by Ivan Bakhtin,A dream by Timofey Voskresensky and A dream by Ivan Trunin (“Irtysh, prevrashchaiushchiisiav Ippokrenu”, 1789–1790). The works present an image ofa good ruler, a happy society and an educational role of poetry.
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The source for research in this article are adaptations of dogmatic andmoralizing texts printed in Basilians typography in 18th century. Examined textshave Polish, Latin and Orthodox Church language origin. Their role in shapingthe Ukrainian literary language and style typical of Ukrainian religious literaturewas studied. Analyses of their influence on the formation of recipients, and in thiscontext the process of shaping the identity of the Uniates, shows Eastern andWestern influences.
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Feature of oeuvre of Marina Tsvetaeva – the predominance of the motive ofdeath. Henry Gorchakov discovers this topic in sixty percent of the poet’s worksof M.Tsvetaeva. Naturally, reflections on death are accompanied by reflectionson life. The article analyzes the peculiarities of development of Tsvetaeva’s work ofanother constant motive – the motive of life, the concept of which is found outin a complex metaphysical context of thinking. Particular attention is paid to the diversity of approaches to understanding life and their changes. At the same time,the poet does not develop his own philosophy of life, focusing on the world ofexperiences, on the one hand, or on a holistic and volatile reality, on the other.
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The article discusses two novels of modern Russian writer Aleksandr Terekhov– Каменный мост (Stone Bridge) and Немцы (Germans). The main aim of the articleis trying to find the answer to a question how a book can be riveting and unsavoryat the same time. Both books were appreciated by readers and critics and wonliterary awards – first in 2009 and the second in 2012. Both are very difficult toread because of the author’s specific style – combination of realistic message withmodernist stream of consciousness. The writer’s style comprises also a great dose ofcynicism and poisonous irony. The first novel is a sort of a journalist’s investigationand concerns the tragic accident from the Stalinist past. The second can be calleda pastiche of an occupational novel and a critical look at the corruption in clericalsystem in Russia.
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The text concerns scientific publishing series “Biblioteka XX vek”, initiated in 1971 by Ivan Colović, Serbian anthropologist and publicist. During 50 years it has become an important cultural institution, which, due to its commitment to the current political and ideological affairs, gained a special role during the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia and then in terms of system transformation. In the 1990s it was an independent platform for the exchange of ideas, an ideological alternative to the nationalist regime, space for its deconstruction and criticism. “Biblioteka XX vek” takes part in animating intellectual Yugosphere −it consolidates the society of authors from former Yugoslav countries around such topics as: the memory of communism, Europeanisation of the Balkans, course and consequences of the transformation. The series paved the way for modern humanistic thought and modern scientific discourse in Serbia as well as supported these processes also in the ex-Yugoslav countries.
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The authoress describes the course of relocation of book collections gathered by writers to public library archives using the example of four such collections that made their way to the Pomeranian Library in Szczecin, whose previous owners were: Stefan Flukowski, Zbigniew Herbert, Ludmiła Marjańska and Andrzej Kuśniewicz. The intent of the writers or their heirs was finding a proper place for each particular collection in order to ensure its preservation and further use. The librarians responsible for establishing public collections hoped that the books would be accompanied by manuscripts, personal mail or other keepsakes; or, should that not be the case − that they would bear dedications, autographs, handwritten notes or other signs of the writers’ use. The author analyses the contents of these four donations with regard to the aspects mentioned above.
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The article presents the profiles of Christ in the second part of Norwid’s Album Orbis in the context of the iconographic tradition. They derive from the Renaissance medals with the image of the Saviour. Particular illustrations have their origins in the tapestry Miraculous Draught of Fishes based on Raphael’s cartoon, a medal with a Hebrew inscription, an image found (according to the reports) around the Roman catacombs and in Lavater’s work. Christ’s ‘portraits’ contained in Album Orbis have been interpreted: they show Jesus as the most important of the famous men, the one who creates the history and is cognizable rationally by science and art. At the same time, He is the incarnated God, occupying a central place in Norwid’s work, both literally and figuratively. This is the manner in which the author expresses the compatibility of rationality and Revelation.
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The aim of the study is to present Norwid’s ‘paper activity’ in Paris in the light of specific rhetorical and diegetic strategies, which were ‘available’ for the poet in the years 1873–1875 and formed his voice of the writer and public speaker. This is how a certain area of the poet’s word arises, which may be called doubly: literary and public. Norwid aims to act with words in an extreme manner quite frequently, which is enchanting on the one hand and evoking mixed feelings on the other. He employs erudition on the edge of extravagance and tests his audience, rather not accustomed to take such kinds of challenges. The years after the Siege of Paris 1870 are of particular importance here, as this is when The Polish Reading Room is becoming the democratic and people’s reading room, whereas Norwid is supporting the idea of the so called natural centralisation of Polish emigrants, which is to happen, most likely, with the mediation of the Reading Room’s Circle.
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The essay starts with Borges and his unsurpassable account of the Library of Babel, interpreted as an ad hoc allegory of the humanistic erudition and its close affiliation with gnosis or, more precisely, its modern variety. The latter is conceived here as described by Eric Voegelin. The humanistic ideal of knowledge, in a manner of speaking, ‘immanentises the eschaton’ by the sheer fact of lending it a form, ‘visualised’ by Borges as the Library of Babel, a ‘gnostic’, inner-worldly equivalent of the Beyond. In a typically modern fashion, the Library replaces the mystics with aesthetics. The transcendental figure of Christ is reduced to an all-too-human figure of Narcissus. And yet, somehow, there is more to books than just words. By reading Ovid in the light of Plato, the essay penetrates and reflects the dual, ambivalent nature of the humanistic − or, shall we say, humane − pursuit of knowledge, gnostically ‘narcissistic’ and platonically ‘Christian’ at the same time. It is only then, at the close of the essay, that we are back with Borges: “Through this space [the Library] [...] there passes a spiral staircase which winds upward and downward into the remotest distance”. Deep within the periodically infinite Library of Babel, there lurks another one − the Library of Bethel − Jacobean, transcendental, surreal.
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The concept of the Holocaust Babel Library discussed in my article was based on articles and lectures of John Barth, Anna Burzyńska, Umberto Eco and Raymond Federman. I show how this notion has crystallised from the popular postmodernism label that was named the Tower of Babel and had its beginning in 2000s. I follow a 2005 novel − History of Love by American writer Nicole Krauss (Polish, poorly translated, edition was published in 2006) rated among the so-called third generation. I show both the historical aspect of this novel (pogroms of Jews in Słonim in 1941) as well as its ideological facet. The Holocaust Babel Library in Krauss’ prose is a sign of a funeral ritual consisting in the reconstruction of history from innumerable quotations, allusions and references to books.
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The development of education, which in the 18th century was available not only to boys, but also girls from wealthy bourgeois families, as well as the development of publishing houses and specialised bookstores with books for children (the first of them was founded by John Newbery) caused the phenomenon of children and teenagers’ ‘eager reading’. The introduction of free access for children to library collections at the American public library in Pawtucket, Rhode Island (1877), turned out to be the ‘Copernican revolution’. The idea was introduced to many American and European libraries. From that time on, children and teenage readers had a real influence not only on the selection of their own readings, but also on the profile, subjects and nature of newly-created books. At the same time, the opposite phenomenon intensified: adult writers and educators tried to control the readings of younger generation. The catalogues of books for children and adolescents created during nearly half a century (1884–1929), evaluated the didactic values of readings, but ignored their literary qualities.
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The article Black Seasons. Black Kites. About the Children’s Reading in Ghettos is devoted to the Holocaust seen and lived from the perspective of children. The author is interested in book collections of those who survived the war and later became writers (U. Orlev, A. Frankel, and M. Głowiński), and those stories that thematise children’s reading in ghettos (D. Combrzyńska-Nogala, M. Szczygielski). Joanna Roszak shows which books became for the children readers a matrix imposed on reality, which met the needs of a library therapy, helped children to cope with the emotional challenges of ghetto existence, and which enabled integration and identification processes. Moreover, the authoress presents which books triggered the escapist interpretation and finally which found an extension in the stories and essays created after the war. The title of the paper refers to The Black Seasons [Czarne sezony] by Michał Głowiński, and to a line from Czesław Miłosz’s Campo di Fiori.
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The analyses are based on teachers’ memoirs and autobiographical narratives that havebeen collected as a result of subsequent editions of research conducted between 1989 and2016. These narratives show the problems, tensions and transformations in education,and in the role of a teacher in Poland over the past 30 years. Changes seen through theeyes of successive generations of teachers, against the background of their life history andprofessional experiences and achievements, are a record of the changes that took placeduring the system transformation. They may be the evidence of an inevitable generationalchange in the teaching profession and teacher community. Research shows that thegeneration born in the 1950s and 1960s, involved in the democratic changes in Poland atthe turn of the 1980s and 1990s, is leaving the teaching profession. This generationparticipated in the “Solidarity” social movement. Its members were brought up and educatedin the sense of a strong social commitment, the so-called ethos. Currently, young teachersborn in the 1990s and later enter the profession. They belong to the generation of free,democratic Poland, which has a more pragmatic attitude to life and professional work ineducation. This is the generation of the internet, unlimited choice, and open global accessto information and goods. The implications of such findings are discussed in the article.
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