Wydział Filologii Polskiej i Klasycznej (WFPiK)/Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology
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Browsing Wydział Filologii Polskiej i Klasycznej (WFPiK)/Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology by Author "Balowski, Mieczysław"
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Item Współrzędne czasu i miejsc(Instytut Filologii Słowiańskiej UAM, Wydawnictwo PRO, 2016) Urbanová, Svatava; Balowska, Grażyna; Balowski, MieczysławThis collection of twenty studies entitled The Coordinates of Time and Place builds upon the book monograph Coordinates of Time (2003) which was published at the Regional Studies Centre University of Ostrava. This examined region, regionalism and regional literature along with its connection with the depiction and the matization of home and the sense landscape of childhood. The inspiration for continuing with the project has been the in creased in terest in the area of re search within the frame work of the humanitarian sciences which takes into account the “new regionalism” and newly formulates a thesis on authenticity, cultural memory and the memory of place, identity, local an choring, roots and cultural traditions. This collection of the new est literary inspirations is divided into eight basic thematic and topical parts which relate, however, to one an other. They are either defined in terms of social- cultural, in the form of depicting literary (textual) space and spatiality, or upon the basis of similar ar tistic and social platforms. Apart from the territorial and ethnographic per spective (Czech Up per Silesia) and the sociological per spective which takes into account, for example, biographical elements, taking into consideration political, historical and literary-historical circumstances. It repeatedly recalls the phenomenon of cultural memory which includes both the individual memory as well as the collective and historical; not neglecting of course the media, genre and the intertextuality in the widest sense. The first chapter entitled New regionalism – theoretical and methodological assumptions contains theoretical reflections about the research on the regional literature. The second chapter entitled Ethnographic Filiation, contains a study on the mining oral legends in the Ostrava region – the Karviná area as preserved in regional literature. This is a specific legacy which can no longer be developed in a living fashion as the over a hundred-year-old mining tradition in the Ostrava region has come to a close. Stories and legends connected with the discovery of coal, with its back-breaking work underground, has paradoxically only been preserved in adaptations aimed at children and young people. The first study in the second chapter and the final eighth chapter are linked with one an other as they deal with the collection of poetry by Petr Motýl Where Coal Goes to Sleep which reflects on the social situation turning point in the Ostrava region at the turn of the century in volving unemployment, emptying of people and the land scape, hope lessness, communication crisis and defects in basic human relation ships. The region-forming element continues, however, to be folk sources and approaches which have been preserved in folk legends and have been revived and at times supported institutionally in various stages of development of regional literature and culture. The fol lowing study in the second chapter divides the connection to folk culture from the perspective of function (the creative element of folk culture, folk culture serving its creators), but with out neglecting its psychological and social links, the influence of individual memories as life enhancing sources (Josef Strnadel). The deep link to, for example, one’s an cestors and homes thereby penetrates into the art production linked with the oral folk culture. The interest in writing in dialect is not merely an ethnographic expression or a mere distinctive mark of naivety in the sense of authenticity and en tertainment, but is actually an expression of regional autonomy. The following chapter en titled Short Life Recapitulations consists of an interpretative study of the works of three authors of the middle generation in the Ostrava region (Karel Vůjtek, Václav Chytil, Marie Vosiková) who incorporate distinctive signs of human existence into their fictional land scapes. The motif of land scape and home in the poetry of Karel Vůjtek or the depiction of home in the lanes lined by linden trees in the short stories by Václav Chytil serve to recall the universal or even archetypal view of a family nest or as Bakhtin would say “the organizing force” through which one perceives one self and evaluates one’s life. The stories of M. Vosiková are not, in contrast, regionally an chored but in stead work with more of a mental map and spatial memory as intellectual potential. The remarkably constructed fictional world of the author’s short stories does not containany as pect of provincialism and cancertainly not be labeled as merely reading for women. The core of the collection The Coordinates of Time and Place is chapter four Seeking Out an Individual, National and Social Identity which is the longest and which is the matically linked with the tumultuous history of the Czech territory of Upper Silesia and Central Europe in the 20th century. It contains specific features given by historical time and territorial affiliation in fluenced by political power relations. Stories and events are retrospectively in cluded here demarcated by World War II, linked in terms of space with the regions of Ostrava, Hlučín and Jeseník, and dealing in terms of nationality with the Czech, Polish and German identity (“Was ser polnisch”, “Prajzáci”). This is linked in terms of meaning with the seeking out of one’s own identity which is strengthened on a local level, linked with concrete places and homes, to the landscape or the area which they view as home. Interpretative attention will also be paid to familyties and relations as they are perceived amongst the old est generation, including the exile experience (Ota Filip) along with the need on the part of the youngest generation of authors which cannot rely on their own authentic memories, but which asks questions as to who their ancestors actually were. The young est generation of authors (Petr Čichoň, Eva Tvrdá, Jaroslav Rudiš), drawing primarily from archive documents or the recollections of period wit nesses, is freed from ideological or formal stereotypes (see the comics trilogy with the cult hero Alois Nebel). The fifth chapter entitled Regionalism in the Post-Modern Situation deals with the satirical love story novel by Miroslav Stoniš and the detective stories of Nela Rywiková. Both authors demonstrate affinities in terms of a thorough knowledge of the region, the regional history of art, culture and literature. Both of them place their plots into regionally significant locales (the Beskydy Moun tains, Ostrava) reflecting on a historical sector which is linked with the post-industrial phase of towns and regions and the disintegration of established social, religious, historical and cultural values. Both transcendes tablished views concerning regionalism and approach their readers in a different fashion by means of play or code. Stoniš chooses a tone of radical irony, electing to call into doubt everything which used to be considered holy (honour, honest work, religious faith) in line with post-modern destruction. Nela Rywiková with a touch of adventure reveals how the proportion between the moral and immoral, between the legal and illegal is being relativized at present. The chapter Poetic Reflections on Place and Land scape focuses on the poetry of poets who entered the literary scene after the Velvet Revolution. Bogdan Trojak and Petr Hruška along with Petr Motýl and the prose writer Jan Balabán rank among the most significant post-revolution writers. They are linked by a post-revolution geopoetics, with the “Silesian myth”, with Ostrava, with an intimate and shared artistic sphere. Regional literary research has to respect the polyphony evoked by their activities in relation to the magazines Welles, Landek, Modrý květ (Blue Flower) in literary clubs, gatherings, literary get-togethers and authorial readings which consisted of original work not only written in Czech but also in Polish and in Slovak, with out it being viewed as art by national minorities. The chapter On Memories, Recollections, Referential and Self-Referential Codes consists of an analysis of Balabán’s post humously published novel Ask Dad which contains the essence of generational and existential delimitations in a concentrated form.