Wokół Władzy (i nie tylko). Kilka listów Tadeusza Konwickiego (z komentarzem)

The article contains a discussion of the author’s correspondence with Tadeusz Konwicki pertaining to socialist realism in literature, particularly to the latter’s novel Władza. Thus far unpublished Tadeusz Konwicki’s letters are quoted here in their entirety.

Russian historical novel in a new way: “Tobol” by Alexey Ivanov

The article aims to find out the deep artistic meanings of the novel by A. Ivanov “Tobol” to show the originality and significance of its structure, modifying in many ways the genre of the historical novel. This is evidenced by the author's tangible focus on the possible transformation of the novel into a form of cinema - accented visual imagery of the novel's components (landscapes, architectural sketches, paintings of everyday life) and, most importantly, the exciting drama in the development of the plot, in all its lines, with a powerful energy of actions and dialogues of the characters (the tragic conflict of the Siberian governor Gagarin and tsar Peter I, the clash of Remezov and Gagarin, the struggle of schismatics, the resistance of the Voguls in their conversion to Christianity, the war with the Dzungars). The article suggests that the Siberian reality of the Peter the Great era is considered by the writer from a very deep angle: Siberia, with its many national and socio-historical identities (pagans-Voguls, nomadsDzungars, Cossacks, etc.), with their inevitable struggle, is seen as the “key to Russia”, to understanding the complexity of its historical destiny. An important task is also to pay attention to the connection in the novel of the forms of realistic narrative with the magic of the wonderful, fantastic (in the images of the pagan view of the world of many characters), bringing together the work of A. Ivanov with modern magical realism in literature.

The Campaign for Realism in the New York Periodical Press

This chapter demonstrates that the fight for greater realism in literature and life was long-lasting and transpired not on a single front but across many battlefields involving a wide variety of actors. Often, war itself was the impetus, first in the rewriting of the “facts” and significance of the Civil War and later as a means of response to the masculine bluster and bloodlust wrought by the Spanish-American War. The gender and class wars of the 1880s and 1890s were also relevant to this embattled genre, as were the effects of industrialization and immigration, which led to the massive growth of New York at this time, where so many of the newspapers and magazines promoting the various strands of realism were based. New York, war, and social issues were all entangled in the emergence of this genre, as numerous New York authors and artists sought to make sense of modern America and mold it to their own visions.

The Creativity that Drives the World

This essay contends that reality is a creative evolutionary process by which the virtual is transformed into the actual and argues that our critical conception of realism in literature needs to be altered to reflect this purposive and progressive living reality in contrast to the static and dead actuality assumed by the conventional notion of realism as mimesis. Realist fiction writers who are profound creators have strategically employed metaphysically dipolar and ethically earnest literary genres in tandem with mimetic realism, resulting in complexly interactive alternative and prophetic realisms that function as catalytic agents for progressive change in our world.

Wat w Polsce powojennej. Tezy

Wat in postwar Poland. Theses A postwar period (1946–1953) in Wat’s literary output is usually omitted by the critics (exceptions are Venclova and Ritz). Difficulties in making comments on this period perhaps stem from that which does not usually fit what critics write about Wat (for instance, that fact that since his arrival from Kazakhstan he was a confirmed anticommunist) and what he published then. A puzzling is the presence in Wat’s works (e.g. in Antyzoil) unanimous declarations of the support for the postwar political order. However, when Wat followed some voice of disagreement, it sounded silent, unconvincing (criticism of the project of realism in literature). A positive involvement in Polish reality at that time was certainly connected with Wat’s personal experiences who, having arrived from his wandering from the Soviet Union to Poland, felt it as “paradise” (this is the name he referred to Poland in Mój wiek [My Century]), seemed not to perceive that it was only a “sham” of paradise. Besides, Wat wanted to participate in Polish cultural life, especially because in postwar years he started to feel literary unfulfilment and a strong need to return to writing. A particularly meaningful example in this context is Wat’s unsuccessful drama of Kobiety z Monte Olivetto [Women from Monte Olivetto] – the writing of which was for the poet the act of desperation and it created a paradox: wanting to participate in postwar literary life in Poland, Wat decided to “collaborate with Social Realism” (Zdzisław Łapiński’s definition), in order to achieve his goal.

Longus, Antiphon, and the topography of Lesbos

SinceDaphnis and Chloeis a work of fiction, modern criticism has paid little attention to the topographical details of Lesbos which Longus scatters through his work. Today a preoccupation with biographical or topographical realism in literature is out of fashion, and Longus's world has in any case been described, by one of his most percipient modern critics, as ‘un monde des plus irréels’. Yet just as Longus's women reveal a striking blend of fictional romance and social realism, so the background to his narrative, however much adorned with items of baroque fancy, nevertheless remains solidly based on the geography and ecology of Lesbos itself. The cave of the Nymphs, with its grotto, its spring, and its clutter of statues, may derive from the pastoral property-closet; but Longus's description of Mytilene agrees with those given by Strabo and Pausanias, and many other details—the trailing vines, the wine, the flourishing orchards, the prevalence of hares for hunting—suggest familiarity with the terrain. The description in the proem of the grove of the Nymphs, thick with flowers and trees and watered by a single spring, at once calls to mind the site of the great temple at Mesa, in the Kalloni plain. Most striking of all, since often used as evidence for Longus'signoranceof Lesbos, is his vivid description of a heavy snowfall, much at odds with later travellers' accounts of the climate's perennial mildness. But in the winter of 1964, when I was living on the island, snow lay three feet deep in the chestnut forest above Aghiassos, while Methymna was icebound, with frozen taps and sub-zero temperatures, for ten days, so that all the eucalyptus trees outside the schoolhouse died. The worst winter in living memory was that of 1953/4; the mountains are frequently snowbound. Longus, like Alcaeus, who also describes such conditions, knew what he was talking about.