Półka literacka 2020

Szkic prezentuje najciekawsze/najgłośniejsze polskie książki prozatorskie i poetyckie opublikowane w 2020 roku w celu swoistego podsumowania tego, co działo się na polskim rynku wydawniczym w minionym roku. Autorka próbuje odpowiedzieć na pytanie, czy pandemia koronawirusa w jakiś sposób wpłynęła na pisarki/pisarzy, poetów/poetki i wydawców. Jej celem jest sprawdzenie, jakiego typu literaturę piękną najchętniej wydawano i jacy pisarze/pisarki, poeci/poetki cieszyli się największym zainteresowaniem recenzentów. Krótko analizuje i interpretuje dziesięć wybranych przez siebie książek prozatorskich i poetyckich, pokazując również, jak o nich pisali inni komentatorzy współczesnego życia literackiego.Wybór książek do omówienia oparł się zatem nie tyle na subiektywnych odczuciach autorki, ile przede wszystkim na recepcji. Celem szkicu stało się ponadto zaprezentowanie różnorodności publikacyjnej oraz pokazanie najpopularniejszych tendencji twórczych. Wśród omówionych autorów znaleźli się: Joanna Bator, Konrad Góra, Wioletta Grzegorzewska, Hanna Krall, Natalia Malek, Krystyna Miłobędzka, Marta Podgórnik, Zyta Rudzka, Szczepan Twardoch, Patrycja Sikora, a zatem w większości przypadków autorzy doskonale znani polskiej publiczności czytającej, którzy albo ogłosili swoje nowe książki, albo zaproponowali wybory dotychczasowej swej twórczości. Z przygotowanego zestawienia wynika, że szczególnym uznaniem (także „zawodowych”) czytelników cieszyły się przede wszystkim te utwory, w których twórcy próbowali scalać rozbite tożsamości, powracali do traumatycznej przeszłości, próbując uporządkować „tu i teraz” lub dyskutowali problemy komunikacyjne, a także te opowieści, które określić można mianem zaangażowanych społecznie. Tekst mieści się w obrębie literaturoznawstwa i krytyki literackiej.

Kobiece spotkania z Islandią. Prolegomena

W artykule autor podejmuje tematykę sposobu przedstawiania kobiet w relacjach podróżniczych o Islandii, których autorami są mężczyźni (m.in. Daniel Vetter, Edmund Chojecki i Ferdynand Goetel), a także kobiecego pisania o Islandii w piśmiennictwie polskim. Zagadnienie to nie było w ogóle podejmowane w dotychczasowej refleksji naukowej. Dokonano chronologicznego i syntetycznego przeglądu oraz zinwentaryzowania literatury podmiotowej z wykorzystaniem elementów feministycznej krytyki literackiej. Wypowiedzi przestawiające kobiece doświadczenie i poetykę kobiecego pisania o Islandii pojawiają się w praktyce twórczej polskich autorów dopiero w 1977 roku (pierwsza kobieca relacja autorstwa Haliny Ogrodzińskiej), by w ostatnich latach znacznie się rozwinąć (ilościowo i jakościowo) w licznych reportażach książkowych autorstwa m.in. Magdaleny Anny Węcławiak, Agnieszki Rezler, czy projekcie z pogranicza sztuk plastycznych i książki artystycznej autorstwa Soni Rammer. Dokonany przegląd pokazuje, że praktyka kobiecego pisania o Islandii rozwinęła się w ostatnich latach i wymaga szczegółowych analiz i interpretacji badawczych. Otworzy to niewątpliwie nowe perspektywy badawcze penetrujące również inne, intersemiotyczne obszary: fotografię, muzykę (Hania Rani i jej płyta Esja) czy plastykę (Magdalena Armanda Kołakowska i Sonia Rammer).

“We have an origin like water”: The Path towards Femininity in Eavan Boland’s The Journey

Eavan Boland’s poem “The Journey” depicts the dream of a woman, who – just like Inanna, a Sumerian goddess – embarks on the eponymous journey into the underworld, guided by Sappho. At first, she sees nothing in the darkness, yet, having accustomed to it, she observes mothers and children in loving embraces: the image which is immediately disturbed by the female’s guide, who makes the persona realise that these people are the victims of an unspecified plague. At this moment, the woman, stricken with terror, notices the signs of sickness and death; among others, she sees infants being poisoned during breast feeding. Sappho stresses that the watched mothers have a lot in common with the speaker – they are all loving and caring, despite their occupation or status, but also despite the tragedy they participate in. In this feminine transfiguration of The Aeneid, the terrified lyrical subject expresses the wish to provide a testimony on their behalf; however, Sappho assures her that she is here precisely in order to gain this knowledge of her genesis. When the woman finally returns to reality, everything remains as it was, but she feels the difference nonetheless; she is deeply affected by the events she has seen.The aim of my paper is to analyse Eavan Boland’s take on the path towards femininity in the context of Bracha L. Ettinger’s matrixial theory. What Ettinger proposes is a supplement to Freudian-Lacanian approach, which makes it possible to conceive of a new, feminine-based, non-binary matrixial difference, grounded upon proximity, hospitality, and exchange instead of a set of separations and the male/female opposition. I will endeavour to prove that Ettingerian psychoanalysis and Boland’s piece, when combined, can unfold the potential of a matrixial journey towards becoming a woman, grounded upon such notions as compassion, fragility, wit(h)nessing, exchange, connectivity, and transsubjective experience, unthinkable from the Oedipal perspective.

Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals of Scotland: The Creation of the Romantic Author

The increase in popularity of the Home Tour in the 19th century and the publication of many journals, diaries, and guides of tours of Scotland by, such as, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, led to the perception of Scotland as a literary tour destination. The tour of Scotland invariably resulted in a journal in which identities such as writer, traveller, observer, were created. The text became a location for the pursuit of a sense of place and identity. For women in particular, the text offered opportunities to be accepted as a writer and commentator. Dorothy Wordsworth made two journeys to Scotland: the first, in 1803, with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the second, in 1822 with Joanna Hutchinson, the sister of Mary, her brother’s wife. This paper considers Dorothy’s identity constructed in those Scottish journals. Discussions of Dorothy Wordsworth have tended to consider her identity through familial relationship, and those of her writing by what is lacking in her work. Indeed, her work and her writing are frequently subsumed into the plural of ‘the Wordsworths’. This paper considers the creation of individual self in her work, and discusses the social and spatial construction of identity in Dorothy’s discourse in her journals about Scotland.

Between ‘the me that leaves and the me that returns’: Gertrude Bell’s Persian Gateways and Walls

Persian Pictures, Gertrude Bell’s first published collection, differs substantially from her later works; critics have accused it of sentimentality, lack of substance – a mere ‘folly’ incommensurable with Bell’s later writings. In the present article, I intend to advocate for Bell, though, proposing to see the supposed faults of Persian Pictures as the work’s greatest strengths which in fact reveal the author’s other, more lyrical and less ‘business-like’, side. With special emphasis placed on the concept of gateways and walls I will attempt to shed light on how, by traversing and/or transgressing borders of various types and putting herself to a series of identity-forming tests, Persian Pictures – to the contemporary reader – offer insight into the broader apparatus of British (and Western) colonialism.By linking each of the selected essays with one of John Frederick Lewis’s orientalist paintings, I hope to further strengthen my argument that aspects of Persian Pictures, originally seen as the work’s weaknesses, have the potential to actually enrich discussions of Western mis/representations of the Orient, without compromising its author, and should thus be approached as instances of powerful and vivid responses to the ‘shock of the new,’ as experienced by Gertrude Bell – and, in fact, many other travellers, male and female alike, who ventured into these realms.

„Parcours de la reconnaissance”. 120 dni „Kultury” Wojciecha Karpińskiego w kontekście dialektyczności podmiotu Paula Ricoeura

W artykule analizuję ostatnią książkę Wojciecha Karpińskiego pt. 120 dni „Kultury” w kontekście filozofii człowieka Paula Ricoeura. Karpiński wybrał publikowane w paryskiej „Kulturze” teksty pisarzy, którzy go najbardziej inspirowali, uczyli patrzenia na świat i na drugiego człowieka, a przede wszystkim pokazywali, jak odkrywać piękno sztuki. „Ja” Karpińskiego kształtowało się w spotkaniu z innymi artystami. Tożsamość narracyjna jest pomostem prowadzącym do zaproponowanej przez francuskiego filozofa koncepcji otwartej dialektyki, która łączy dwa podejścia. Po pierwsze badacz przyjmuje porządek aposterioryczny, wychodząc od konkretu, czyli jednostkowego podmiotu umiejscowionego w określonych realiach życiowych, zanurzonego w konkretnej kulturze, posiadającego własną historię i doświadczenia, po drugie posługuje się kantowskim zwrotem, prowadząc refleksję o podmiocie w perspektywie transcendentalnej. Podmiotowość to zwrócenie się ku Innemu, a dzięki Innemu dokonuje się transcendowanie siebie. Jak dowodzi francuski filozof, w języku istnieje „siła ontologiczna”, która wskazuje na określony sposób bycia-w-świecie. Tożsamość podlega świadomym przeobrażeniom, a literatura jest artystycznym zapisem tego ruchu i zarazem dyskursem kulturowo-antropologicznym.

Packing up the Past: Vicki Baum’s Quest for Heimat

The best-selling Austrian novelist Vicki Baum took ship alone for America in 1932 but emigration soon became exile for the Jewish author. The feeling of ‘Heimatlosigkeit’, or rootlessness, which oppressed Baum at that time was emotional and spiritual rather than physical. Child of a Jewish immigrant family in the anti Semitic society of nineteenth-century Vienna, Vicki Baum had long questioned the loci and the politics of Heimat, a German term whose significance far exceeds the simple definition of home or homeland. Cut loose from Heimat, she began her travels to far-away destinations, seeking to identify a common humanity and the universal moralities which could guide Europe to a better future. She wrote her travel experiences into novels which allowed her to narrate the landscapes and customs but also the inner lives of the peoples she encountered. A long-standing belief in the inauthenticity of verbal communication encouraged her to transcend linguistic barriers with confidence but it was her gender, she believed, which enabled her to share and interpret other cultures. Commonality rather than difference is the focus of her travel-letters and their fictional transpositions. Focusing on Baum’s experiences on Bali seen in a postcolonial perspective, the article argues that the island was for the novelist a space of transcendence, where the inhabitants held on to values already lost in Western societies.

Travelling Sideways in Time (Without a Suitcase): The Aggregate Identity of Audrey Parker on Haven

A distinct strand has differentiated itself in television programming in the twenty-first century: television series that feature female protagonists travelling between parallel worlds. The worlds in most of these series are on the edge of destruction through terrorism, war or another traumatic event. The female protagonists, who share the special ability to travel between the worlds, have a unique role to play – they serve as mediators between the universes. Their inbetweenness enables their autonomy and resistance to violence, death, and appropriation. This role is played by Audrey Parker (Emily Rose) in the fantasy/supernatural drama Haven. Audrey’s task is to travel through an interdimensional portal to the town of Haven every twenty-seven years to help as a police officer to protect the inhabitants who are plagued by “the Troubles,” that is, supernatural abilities, which finally threaten them with imminent destruction. The uniqueness of Audrey resides not only in her special status as a traveller between the worlds but also in her identity, which consists of many segments in which different consciousnesses inhabit the same non-ageing body over five hundred years. The essay will analyse the unique temporality of the character, governed by female patterns of travel and her nomadic subjectivity, proposing that her figure links human lifetimes to geological aeons, symbolised by aether, the primary substance of the Void, located between the worlds. That link makes Haven a show of the Anthropocene, the geologic time period defined by humanity’s influence upon the earth. The Anthropocene challenges us to think beyond the usual temporality of a human lifespan, and so does Haven. The imminent destruction as a result of individual egotism leading to the misuse of aether in the show is a trope for the destruction of our planet. Haven uses the figure of Audrey Parker to represent a network of connections and repercussions dispersed over centuries to illustrate how our cumulative actions impact our planet. The show’s anti-linear strategies thus address the environmental concerns of an increasingly unstable environment to propose new ways through which to figure and address imminent threats concerning ecological disaster.

A Journey to the City of Hope: Immigration, Diaspora and Identity in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl

The motif of journey constitutes one of the most important cornerstones of both postcolonial literatures and science fiction narratives, the latter of which owe a significant debt to the essentially colonial origins of the genre, thus inviting postcolonial practices of reimagining and writing back. For that reason, the following article aims at an examination of the peculiar ties between the postcolonial theory and science fiction, in order to discuss how speculative fiction allows for an in-depth analysis of the contemporary diasporic condition and the issues of memory and cultural identity, in the context of a dialogue with contemporary diaspora studies and postcolonial studies.The motif of the journey, then, understood both in literal and metaphoric terms, becomes the point of departure for a discussion concerning the ways in which the experiences of migration and diasporic existence influence the subject’s identity as well as their relationship with the culture and language of the country of their ancestors.To this end, the paper aims at a thorough analysis of the ways in which Larissa Lai, in her novel Salt Fish Girl, engages in a discussion regarding the contemporary condition of diasporic communities, proposing a new perspective on the complicated relationship between diasporas, their past and ancestral heritage as well as their language, and the motif of journey, understood both spatially (as a journey from one place to another) and temporally (as a journey back to the roots or the impossibility of going back). Employing postcolonial theory as well as the theory of science fiction as the methodological framework, the paper argues that for Lai, the journey of one of the incarnations of the protagonist, Nu Wa, to the Island of Mist and Forgetfulness constitutes an extended metaphor for the experience of Chinese immigrants in Canada. The motif of journey is inextricably tied here with the practices of remembering and forgetting, crucial for diasporic communities, as well as the constant search for a new, hyphenated identity in the new reality. Moreover, Lai suggests that such a journey constitutes a traumatic experience for the individual, which results in the loss of access to ancestral heritage as well as the language and the necessity of accepting one’s liminal condition, which contributes to the feeling of alienation and rootlessness.

Female Revolution behind the Camera

The paper addresses the issue of discrimination against women in the world of cinema. The author examines the successive stages of the struggle pursued by women of cinema for equality and fair treatment in an industry dominated and ruled by men. The discussion covers the most important campaigns and movements challenging gender discrimination, such as #MeToo in the U.S. or the European #nobodysdoll, as well as watershed events from the author’s point of view, including the Oscar for Kathryn Bigelow – the first woman in history to receive the award for best director, Harvey Weinstein’s conviction for sexual assault, and the leak of Sony’s confidential financial documents. The public disclosure of these facts triggered a process that should be referred to as gender equalisation in the film industry. The author also takes a look at the latest events in the industry, such as Agnieszka Holland’s election as president of the European Film Academy. In addition, the paper also comments on the aspect of feminine nouns in Polish and the attitude towards them on the part of the women they are supposed to describe. Information is provided on the U.S. and European cinema markets, as well as some diagnoses of problems appearing so far and suggested solutions.