Ratajczak, WiesławPanek, Sylwia2024-10-072024-10-072024Wiesław Ratajczak, Spór o „Wyzwolenie” w roku 1903, Wydawnictwo Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, Poznań 2024, ISBN 978-83-7654-576-9 (Polemika Krytycznoliteracka w Polsce, pod redakcją Sylwii Panek, tom 27), ss. 338.978-83-7654-576-9https://hdl.handle.net/10593/27847The premiere of Wyspiański’s Wyzwolenie [Liberation] on 28 February 1903 sparking one of the longest and most important polemics in the annals of Polish culture. The subject of dispute became the work’s extremely innovative artistic form, as well as the ‘gauntlet’ it lay down to the Romantic tradition. Wyspiański was expected to continue his work Wesele [The Wedding], so the title of the new drama was treated as a foretelling of the National Programme, a take on the bardic tradition by a contemporary artist. Failing to live up to such expectations, the author instead confronted readers and viewers with a series of antonymous ideas, diagnoses-as-caricatures of Polish sensibilities and in no way did he suggest a simple means of overcoming the effects of slavery in its broadest sense. Prominent critics across the generations and with artistic tastes as well as across political circles, all took part in the polemic over Wyzwolenie. A reading of their speeches therefore provides insight into the stylistic diversity of literary and theatre criticism of the time and its intellectual horizons. The first stage of the polemic over this work (which continued in the following decades on the occasion of successive premieres) was the most important, as the cornucopia and variety of approach, and often contradictory or writ large antinomies consolidated the position of the work, one might say – as one untamed, disturbing, dangerous and a perpetual source of controversy.plinfo:eu-repo/semantics/book