Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka, 2013, nr 22 (42))
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Item Taniec śmierci na scenie kolegium jezuickiego w Kaliszu?(2013) Kurek, Krzysztof; Wydra, WiesławThe discussion was prompted by the discovery, made in Cathedral Library in Gniezno, of a notebook from early 18th century, with notes by a student of the Jesuit college in Kalisz. The authors have found in it a modified copy of a poem ("Różnych stanów piękne grono" [The Beautiful Gathering of Various Estates]) written on the famous late-17th-century painting, "Taniec śmierci" [The Dance of Death], displayed in the Franciscan monastery in Kraków. The authors propose a hypothesis that the copy of the poem was a script for a show staged in the college. The discussion is given in a wide cultural and theological context, presenting the dance-of-death topos as reflection of the idea of "vanitas". The article presents modes of concretization of the "dance macabre" image in European art from the 14th to 17th century, with particular attention paid to theatrical productions of the topos in popular shows and in Jesuit school theatrical productions.Item „Drogi czytelniku, kategorycznie oświadczam, że nie jestem pewien”(2013) Winiecka, ElżbietaThe 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.Item Janka w (literackim) zwierzyńcu(2013) Wysłouch, Seweryna"Pisarze w zwierzyńcu" [Writers in an Animal Park] by Janina Abramowska are an admirable display of erudition, originality of interpretation, and careful composition. The text brings on reflections about the animal world, its distinct quality, and the animal narrative perspective, which the author has not noticed.Item „Ogród sztuk”. Kilka uwag o "Orkiestrze" Zbigniewa Rybczyńskiego(2013) Grodź, IwonaThe garden presents itself as an area consciously created by the human being. Its representation is usually actualized in opposition both to what is natural and to what is artificial (e.g. to a city). Over many years now, the garden has been been considered to be a “cultural fossil”, and as such, an object of importance for literary critics, film critics, art historians, musicologists etc., and an anthropological phenomenon, which is demonstrated by contemporary juxtapositions of aesthetics with environmental science, pace Gernot Böhme, or the transcultural aesthetics promoted by Wolfgang Welsch). At this stage, we are very close to full understanding of the phenomenon of garden-topos, as well as the numerous garden metaphors. In Zbigniew Rybczyński’s film "Orkiestra" there are several areas of author’s interest in the garden created and filmed on a theatrical stage. The garden as a space of life-renewal, symbol of birth and metaphysical rebirth, a renewed experience of fulness. The garden as a space of ordered life, positive energy, areas of joy liberation, a synonym of goodness and ideals. Finally, as the symbol of return to creation, beauty, to the first beginning, to civilized and tame nature.Item Poezja życia / poezja instrukcji: "poems" Anrzeja Sosnowskiego w kontekście teorii poezji Ezry Pounda(2013) Pietrzak, WitIn the present article Andrzej Sosnowski’s "poems" is analysed against the theoretical principles elaborated by Ezra Pound. Pound’s postulates such as the ideogrammic method and the melo-, fano-, and logopoeia, all of which are briefly discussed, are used to characterise Sosnowski’s poetic practice. The article shows that, irreducible differences notwithstanding, both poets write in accordance with a set of similar principles. The difference between Sosnowski’s "poems" and Pound’s "Cantos" consists mainly in the fact that the former gives up on the inherently Poundian desire to reorganise reality in an epic work and seeks what may be termed a scene of voice on which one’s ownmost identity can be manifested. It is among the many discourses that comprise "poems" that a voice of life sounds in all its complexity and fragility.Item Jakuba Sobieskiego opisanie wyprawy na Moskwę (na podstawie "Diariusza ekspedycyjej moskiewskiej dwuletniej królewica Władysława Anno Domini 1617")(2013) Borek, PiotrThe essay discusses Jakub Sobieski’s diaries and memories, which belong to the finest specimens of such writing in Polish Baroque. The diary and memoirs of the Moscow campaign of 1617-1618 have survived in only a few copies, with the most important ones in Biblioteka Czartoryskich in Cracow. Reconstruction of Prince Władysław’s struggle for the Russian crown is mostly based on a handwritten testimony called "Diariusz ekspedycyjej moskiewskiej dwuletniej królewica Władysława A. D. 1617" [The Diary of the Two-Year Moscow Campaign by Royal Prince Władysław in 1617]. The events described in the diary span from April 5th, 1617 to December 28th, 1618. The author has arranged the material chronologically, focusing on the text as historical evidence. The conclusion of the text, where Sobieski quotes a fragment of Tacitus’s Annals, points out to the argumentative function of the work, which was supposed to explain to Poles (the king, the sejm and senate, the nobility) that commissaries were right in signing the Truce of Deulino, regarding the safety of the homeland threatened by Turks and Tatars, and the budgetary difficulties of the Crown and Lithuania. The second work by Sobieski is more of a Baroque memoir, composed as a temporal sequence (some fragments have the structure of diary). The author reconstructs the events of the Moscow campaign, beginning with the death of tsar Ivan the Terrible (1584), and leads the narrative to the end of 1618, when the Truce of Deulino. The work is characterized by greater coherence in presentation of facts, their selection, and a more general point of view, pointing out to the failure of Polish dynastic policy. Sobieski seems to be critical of the Polish intervention and the Polish "raison d’état" in this respect. He is also critical of the young prince’s campaign of 1617-1618; he was a commissioner for treaties with Moscow during the campaign.Item Szymborska czytana od końca(2013) Abramowska, JaninaThe essay is about Wisława Szymborska’s late poetry, especially the last volume, "Wystarczy" [Enough]. The poet’s frequent returns, repetitions, and various references to her earlier work are of particular importance. The author argues that, contrary to the general opinion, these references do not reflect a creative crisis or exhaustion of Szymborska’s poetics, but develop and deepen her anthropological reflection on the essence of humanity.Item Popioły Marci Shore(2013) Kopeć, ZbigniewThe article discusses Marci Shore’s social and historical thought, as presented in her books: "Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968" (2006), "The Taste of Ashes" (2013), and her essays recently published in Polish translation. The author follows the American historian, presenting her concept of modernity, but focuses on the main theme of her research: the contribution of Jewish writers, poets, artists, and intellectuals to the creation of Marxism. The author acknowledges the great value of Marci Shore’s writings, but argues that her panorama of the 20th century would be fuller if her discussion included a reflection on the religious attitude of many Jewish thinkers to Marxism and the USSR. This topic was discussed by Nikolai Berdyaev and Polish thinkers who published in pre-war social journals.Item Rejestry przemocy. Usuwanie Żydów z języka Czechowicza(2013) Jarzyna, AnitaThe article is a reaction to the second edtion of Józef Czechowicz’s "Letters" (2011), which the author compares to the first edition (1977). It turns out that the poet’s letters, when they went through censorship screening in the 1970s, were purged not only of politically charged passages, where he mentions Miłosz, Czuchnowski, Iwaniuk, and Łobodowski, as well as the critical passages about Marxism, but also his remarks about Jews, remarks that were mostly antisemitic and stereotypical. The analysis of these passages is confronted with Czechowicz’s photographs of the Jewish quarter in Lublin and with the “Jewish traces” in his poetry. Above all, however, the discussion focuses on the language of violence, exposed in the poem "śmierć" [death] in the volume called "dzień jak co dzień". The poem has been interpreted polemically, in opposition to Jacek Leociak, who reads "śmierć" both figuratively and as a text about a slaughterhouse. In this way, unexpected dimensions of Czechowicz’s sensitivity are shown, as the poet understands the cruelty of modern “animal killing industry” (used by the designers of the Holocaust machine), while at the same time he uses a dangerous array of antisemitic stereotypes, which were previously unknown to his critics.Item Biografie polsko-żydowskie i żydowsko-polskie: rekonesans ponawiany(2013) Czyżak, AgnieszkaThe article contains reflections on changes in biographical writing, especially biography of persons of heterogenous ethnic identity. The biographies are not only reconstructions of an individual’s life, but also a clear testimony and reflection of changes in collective consciousness. It turns out that biographies also discover, in a peculiar way, the author’s identity, who, in the process of selection and creation of a biographical text, reveals a part of their own history. This aspect is clearly seen in texts by second and third generation Holocaust survivors, and is demonstrated by interpretations of Magdalena Tulli’s "Włoskie szpilki" [Italian High Heels] and Piotr Paziński’s "Pensjonat" [Boarding house].Item „To” Magdaleny Tulli(2013) Wiegandt, EwaThe article analyses and interprets "Włoskie szpilki" [Italian High Heels] in the context of autobiographic writing, which is a new phenomenon in Tulli’s creative development. The analysis of autobiographical writing consists in a description of subject-construction. The construction is determined by combination of roles: the real author, the literary author, and the narrator-character. The style of the novel is characterized by the use of Holocaust topoi, and “March talk”, which leads the writer to the discovery that Polish post-war antisemitism castigates Jews for concealing their extraction. The aesthetic of postmemory, manifested in the novel, is interpreted as a transition from the modern rhetoric of inexpressibility and unutterableness, to the postmodern aesthetic of expression of what is absent.Item Przeszłość, przyjaźń. Dwie glosy do poematu "nożyk profesora" Tadeusza Różewicza(2013) Jaworski, MarcinThe article is an interpretation of the eponymous long poem from Tadeusz Różewicz’s volume "nożyk profesora" [professor’s knife]. The first part discusses the modes modes of narration of the experience of the Holocaust. The discussion focuses on meanings of the words “memory” and “history”, on the ironic use of pastoral convention, and on the transformation of the metaphor from Cyprian Norwid’s "Przeszłość" [The Past]. The poem "recycling" from the volume "zawsze fragment. recycling" is an important context. The second part of the article is devoted to the friendship between Tadeusz Różewicz and Mieczysław Porębski. The description of the friends’ breakfast points out to an interpretation of their relation in the context of their wartime biography: a death camp for Porębski, and resistance fighting for Różewicz. The poet, in spite of his memory and long-time friendship with the former prisoner, presents the Holocaust as a mediated experience that is virtually inaccessible. However, in many ways he still tries to bring it closer to the reader and does not let the reader forget it.Item Głowiński: tożsamość prozą (od początku)(2013) Kuczyńska-Koschany, KatarzynaThe article is an attempt to reach the first statements and texts by Michał Głowiński, relating to Jewish identity in Poland, the condition of a child of the Holocaust, the trauma of a Holocaust survivor, and the situation of an intelectual. The author of the article tries to demonstrate continuity of all creative gestures, from the frist writings and statements, signed with pseudonyms, through "Czarne sezony" [The Black Seasons] and their continuations, to the autobiographical "Kręgi obcości" [Circles of strangeness]; the continuity is seen in the perspective of identity. The author is also interested, in the given subject scope, in Głowiński’s spatial obsessions (especially claustrophobia and phantasmagoria). The stake of literary “self-therapy” is in the most crucial things: truth of oneself, memory, self-identification.Item Źle przemieszani(2013) Czapliński, PrzemysławThe main statement of the article is that Polish-Jewish and Jewish-Polish biographies have an ambiguous ontological status. The status, which the article describes as spectral, is traced in Polish literature over the last twenty four years (from mid-80s till now). Three conventions have been identified, which, because of their openness to ontologically incomplete beings, are good expressions of complications of biography and identity. The conventions are romance, genealogy, and horror. The writers who use these conventions aim at representing a concrete Polish-Jewish or Jewish-Polish biography, but the phantasmatic quality of combination of what is Polish with what is Jewish leads to unreality of all elements of a novel. Consequently, not only Jewish characters and Jewish identity, but also Poles and Polish identity become phantasmatic.Item „Braterstwo krwi”. Historia Stanisława Aronsona(2013) Ratajczak, WiesławBased on conversations with the hero, Patrycja Bukalska’s "Rysiek z Kedywu. Niezwykłe losy Stanisława Aronsona" [Rysiek from Kedyw. Incredible Tribulations of Stanisław Aronson], is an important contribution to the study of Polish-Jewish relations. This is because Aronson’s life is a unique combination of various elements of Polish and Jewish biographies in the 20th century. His life story includes: a happy childhood in a wealthy assimilated Jewish family, the nightmare of Soviet and German occupation, deaths of closest relations, participation in Armia Krajowa resistance movement and Warsaw Uprising, military service in general Anders’s corps, and then in Israeli army. Jew, Pole, Israeli: each of these identies demanded a different ordering and expression of memory, different omissions and declarations. With such an unusual and mixed experience, Aronson had a vantage point to look at the images that Poles, Jews, Holocaust survivors and citizens of newly created Israel, had of one another. Bukalska’s book can be read as a voice against generalizations, as a narrative about a concrete human life immersed in history, a narrative about individual choices, courage, and friendship.Item O wyznaniu kanarka, dzieciach na kolonii i apologii wszy planowanej przez Janusza Korczaka(2013) Zgrzywa, AgnieszkaThe point of departure for this article is the memory of moving fragments of Janusz Korczak’s journal from Warsaw ghetto. The author confronts the fragments with Korczak’s earlier texts, such as the short storied about holiday camps for Polish and Jewish children, and the novel "Król Maciuś na bezludnej wyspie" [King Maciuś on a Desert Island]. The image of a canary bird, used in the novel, is confronted with other symbolic stories about this bird, such as the story in Wiesław Myśliwski’s "Pałac" [Palace]. With reference to the image, the article invokes Korczak’s meditations on identity and tolerance, and human ethical and aesthetic choices. The audacity of Korczak’s thoughts and conclusions goes far beyond his time, and seems perfectly fit for ours.Item Ten chudy Schlechter(2013) Maleszyńska, JoannaThe article relates the life and work of a pre-war author who is almost unknown by name, but very popular because of his work, an author of songs, cabaret sketches, and film scrips. He was born in a family of assimilated Jews from Lviv. He made a great contribution to Polish language, both literary and colloquial, by writing song lyrics with phrasings that have become fixed expressions used in communication of the simplest and most universal feelings. Schlechter became a victim of the Holocaust, and his artistic work, which focused on joy and the bright side of life, did not protect him physically and mentally from the Nazi death machine. He was killed in Lviv ghetto, probably in 1943.Item Tekst w kulturze, kultura w tekście. Tradycja łacińska i literatura staropolska w "Spowiedzi" Calka Perechodnika(2013) Skwara, MarekThe article analyses and interprets the apothegms and quotations from ancient and old-Polish literature in one of the most important testimonies of the Holocaust in world literature. In Polish criticism, there are few discussions of Perechodnik’s journal, and the existing articles are controversial because of their biased interpretations, which, in the present author’s opinion, are often manipulatory. It seems that the Polish intepretators of "Spowiedź" try, contrary to the author’s clear intention, to inscribe the text in the current controversies between Poles and Jews, while disregarding the third nation (Germans), and to turn Perechodnik into a postmodern author, because it allows for suspension of ethical rules. The greatness and tragedy of the author, however, stand for their own without such manipulations.Item Mieszanie krwi(2013) Śnieżko, DariuszThe article discusses Jewish conversions to Catholicism in Poland before 1795, presenting the issue from the perspective of discourses of anthropology, religion, and, importantly, class stratification, with reference to the most important European contexts. The survey of source texts includes selected authors, such as Wacław Potocki or Walerian Nekanda Trepka, allowing for an introductory sketch of relations between the idea of nobility, anti-Judaism, and antisemitism.Item Motyw szaleństwa w opowiadaniach Brunona Schulza. Studium psychologiczno-literackie(2013) Sienkiewicz, Barbara; Sienkiewicz-Wilowska, Julia AnastazjaRepresentation of various modes, forms, symptoms and degrees of mental illnesses, frequent in "The Street of Crocodiles", are analysed in two perspectives: psychological and literary-cultural. Using the tools of modern psychology, the article interprets the pathological symptoms of Touya, Maria, aunt Agatha, and various other characters, most importantly the advancing illness of father Joseph, who displays symptoms of schizophrenia. Schulz uses a language filled with metaphors, blurring the border between symptoms of illness and metaphors, between the imaginary and the real, and between health and illness, norm and pathology, between the human and the animal. Schulz’s representation of madness opposes the modern understanding, which is dominated by analytical, rationalist identification of an illness, related to a socially determined norm of mental health. It brings back the premodern quality to madness, which becomes a divine phenomenon, related to the pagan rite of fertility, to the “orgy of life” and Dionysian element, and to Freudian life drive. Dionysius and Freud meet in an area independent from the rules of culture and reason: the return to nature, including the nature in a human being. Here, madness becomes a “basic figure” and “the ultimate ur-schema”, as they belong to the unintellectual, basic, ecstatic sphere. This is related to the imperative of penetration of areas that threaten the “balance of the soul”, to address the topic that shows “the scar of removal”, and forces us to ask the question of limits of humanity.