Authors:Helena Hejman Pages: 10 - 25 Abstract: This paper – presenting a close reading of Stanisław Grochowiak’s poem Posłańcy [The Messengers] – proposes reflections on the “time of the poem”. It deals with the issue of experiencing different temporalities while reading (when and where you are while experiencing written words; what is the relationship between the reader's "real" and "fictional" – immersed in the process of reading – lives), and proposes a depiction of pace moderations in the analyzed work – of its own, differential dynamics. The problem of time and velocity is the starting point for a hermeneutic interpretation, or rather hermeneutic exercises (inspired by Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style): a conceptual, anthropological and semiotic reading experiment carried out on Grochowiak's poem. This essay is an attempt to pave a few paths for understanding The Messengers and their messages. Following in the footsteps of the title characters (with the help of associations and seemingly trivial observations) becomes a cognitive and imaginative adventure, a revolve around an ineffable, dark mystery of the poem (perhaps of all poems and their messengers). PubDate: 2021-09-09 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.01
Authors:Alicja Smaruj Pages: 26 - 35 Abstract: The author of this article attempts to interpret Miron Białoszewski’s poems wywód jestem’u, leżenia, głowienie, roztopienie się we mnie cytatu, mironczarnia, “[leży po mnie w rozbetach w kapie]”, and mylne wzruszenie from the poetic cycle Leżenia from the book Mylne wzruszenia. The author examines how the (autobiographical) subject manifests itself in these poems. She states that the category of self, as described by Roma Sendyka in From the culture of the I to the culture of the self, is more adequate here than the concept of Cartesian ego, and emphasizes its corporeal and relational nature. PubDate: 2021-09-09 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.02
Authors:Katarzyna Warska Pages: 36 - 53 Abstract: A biographer has a great ability to operate with time. He/she lengthens or shortens parts of his/her story, which makes meanings and gives a hierarchy to events. A biographer’s actions have consequences because the time of the biography relates to the time of a character’s life: the clock time and time as it is experienced. One period that is traditionally abridged in a character’s life is childhood. By abridging it, a biographer may renege on a moral pact. The case of Bruno Schulz’s abridged childhood is of particular importance because of his work and declarations. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.03
Authors:Michał Cierzniak Pages: 54 - 71 Abstract: The author of the article refers to Derrida’s concept of play in the discourse of human sciences and Polish literary criticism: Anna Kałuża, Tymoteusz Karpowicz, and Stanisław Barańczak attempt to interpret poetry of Krystyna Miłobędzka, especially her book entitled gubione [lost]. The article focuses of issues such as speed and fluency in the context of modern literature. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.04
Authors:Monika Sikorska Pages: 72 - 86 Abstract: The article deals with the problem of verbalizing drug experience and the resulting problem of determining passage of time. I study Aldous Huxley’s and Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz’s trip-reports written during psychedelic experience. Both writers have trouble with defining passage of time, and although they took the same drug, their psychedelic experience took completely different courses. In Huxley’s subjective perception time seems to “freeze”, while Witkacy’s psychedelic experience seems to be quick and dynamic. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.05
Authors:Joanna Zofia Piechowiak Pages: 87 - 96 Abstract: The article is an analysis and interpretation of Adam Zagajewski’s A quick poem. The main point of consideration is the issue of speed and slowness. The article also addresses the problem of the condition of the lyrical ego and its relationship with the world. It also shows the changes taking place and catastrophic moods. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.06
Authors:Maciej Dajnowski Pages: 97 - 119 Abstract: The article explores the relationship between speed and freedom in Paolo Bcigalupi’s dystopian novel The windup girl. Detailed analyses have been devoted to the main character of the piece – an artificial, genetically modified woman. The contexts for them were both the feminist, postcolonial, and posthumanist reflection, as well as the genre determinants of the novel. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.07
Authors:Paulina Sokólska Pages: 120 - 135 Abstract: The paper is an analysis of fictional reality in Weronika Murek’s W tył, w dół, w lewo focused on its carnivalesque character. The author refers to famous Mikhail Bakhtin’s study Rabelais and his world dedicated, among others, to popular festive forms and folk culture of laughter. Since there are certain rules sanctioning hierarchy and familiarity, as well as inversion or parody of values, different profanations, such as these in Murek’s prose, are possible to happen. The most disturbing one concerns the blasphemic exchange in which a juxtaposition leads to a replacement of Christ’s incarnated body by a rotting corpse. The author invokes Antoni Malczewski’s Maria and poetry of Józef Baka to find familiar voices and embed Murek in Polish literary tradition, taking under consideration her eccentric black humour, choice of grotesque language, and dark, melancholic imagination. W tył, w dół, w lewo not only breaks the taboo of talking about death, but also points out a specific aspect of necroviolence – social and lingual exclusion of the dead. Such provocative, patchwork form demands an answer concerning justification and validation of its usage. The final part of the article proposes to search them through the “metaphysics of meat” which refers to a concept developed in an essay by Jolanta Brach-Czaina. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.08
Authors:Michał Bolek Pages: 136 - 157 Abstract: The main topic of the article is everyday life depicted in the poetry by Tadeusz Różewicz. Its reference point is the concept of everyday life constructed by Bernhard Waldenfels. He distinguishes three ways of perceiving it – it entails regular order, embraces everything that is palpable and tangible, as well as is closed-in-itself and restricted. According to Grażyna Borkowska, everyday life is synonymic to both daunting prose of life and heart-warming familiarness. Thus, everyday life embraces a wide range of human experiences and is valuated both positively and negatively. The category of everyday life understood as above functions as a frame for interpretation of selected Różewicz’s poems which represent different topics – religion and faith, humanity, death, and writing. Everyday life functions in Różewicz’s poetry as a space for religious experience; it enables formulating diverse universal conclusions about humanity and their relations with the world, allows the subject to speak about human mortality, and is the platform for self-referential deliberation about poetry and creating. Interpreting selected poems from the perspective of everyday life lets the reader capture deeper, ambiguous meaning of faith, perceive human existence in its double sense – both ordinary and extraordinary, bind everyday life with death and present it as a space for creating poetry. Those measures make discussed issues clearer and more concrete and combine them with human experience. Showing a specific tension between them and everyday life makes the interpretation richer and opens perspectives for discovering new meanings. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.09
Authors:Patryk Dzikiewicz Pages: 158 - 170 Abstract: The article attempts to analyze Paweł Sołtys’s prose through the lense of Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology. The author argues that the short story Patelnia is not necessary about anything particular, that the content is in some way empty, and that the meaning of the story comes not from the events which take place in the short story, but from the relation of the short story to the different stories in book Mikrotyki by Paweł Sołtys, from which the Patelnia comes from, relation to the dailiness of life, and eventually relation to the whole being expressed through the language of the story. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.10
Authors:Aleksandra Zdanowicz Pages: 171 - 185 Abstract: The article is an attempt to establish the relationship between things, memory, and identity building in Mikrotyki by Paweł Sołtys. Three short stories (Szlugi, Listy, and Patelnia) in which the items constitute the main plotline were selected for analysis. Detailed analysis of the texts showed that all things are strongly connected with the category of nostalgia and the work of memory, thus becoming the building blocks of the writer’s identity, but each of them has a different meaning in this process. Cigarettes are primarily an impulse that activates the memory mechanism and refers to an experience shared by a certain generation. Letters, as nostalgic things,are a memento of the past. An abandoned frying pan becomes a contribution to reflection on the relationship between people and things. Each of the described items forces the author to interpret the past in a specific way, and thus also the present. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.11
Authors:Aleksandra Stybor Pages: 189 - 198 Abstract: The article presents an interpretation of A dreambook for our time by Tadeusz Konwicki in the context of cultural studies of masculine identity. Referring to the research conducted by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, the author proves that ostentatious manifesting heterosexuality by the protagonists of Konwicki’s novel is the result of inability to define their identity within the masculine paradigm based on the soldier ethos. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.12
Authors:Aleksy Poklękowski Pages: 199 - 210 Abstract: This work is devoted to the issue of Jewish themes in Tadeusz Nowak’s novel When you will be a king, when you will be a hangman. It starts with general constatations concerning the author, various elements of his work, and also Jewish themes in works of other authors. Next chapter is devoted to the main issue of the text. It contains the idea of many attributes that are characterize Jewish identity of one characters of the novel, Mojżesz. Then it shows how Mojżesz gradually loses all these attributes during World War II, and what was Tadeusz Nowak’s idea behind these themes. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.13
Authors:Karol Rawski Pages: 211 - 224 Abstract: Words can create reality which is why they sometimes arouse fear in people, especially when they are denominations of threatening forces, unfavourable to men. In my article, I would like to discuss the problem of pestilence and the utterance hereof in Albert Camus’ Plague. Why did Dr. Rieux hesitate to clearly utter the threat' Why did other characters in the novel have no problem voicing “epidemic” out loud' And above all, what are the consequences of uttering a disease' How the word “plague” destroyed the existing spatial status of Oran as a non-place; how it became a gate to building a new spatial status structure based on a heterotopic labyrinth, which, from the moment of utterance of this terrible term, was completely subjugated to the plague. How does the word escape the doctor’s room' What is the role of the figure of window in the process of the name overcoming barriers and passing from the level of language to the level of reality' And finally, whether the rhythm analysis can become an answer, deafening and counteracting the still resounding threat contained in the word. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.14
Authors:Aleksandra Łasińska Pages: 225 - 248 Abstract: The article is an analysis of Magdalena Grzebałkowska’s book Poland 1945: war and peace and aims to examine the categories of memory present in it. The author, based on chosen characters, describes several kinds of memory: of a child, of an elderly person, and of the other. The aim of the analysis is to point the presence of various forms of memory in the book and to illustrate their polyphony. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.15
Authors:Konrad Nogalski Pages: 249 - 273 Abstract: The subject of the work is the death of Stanisław Przybyszewski. The writer’s legend, which is commonly known, contrasts with his image created during the funeral customs after his death. The author has analyzed all the important press reports about Przybyszewski’s death and compares them with other documents and findings of the biographers. PubDate: 2021-09-08 DOI: 10.26881/jk.2021.12.16
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