Stanisława Lema zabawy językiem – czy neologizm rzeczywiście jest neologizmem?

The author has analysed the content of the Polish-Russian dictionary of S. Lem’s neologisms created by Monika Krajewska. Among ca. 1,450 lexical units, 27 cases were found that a supposed neologism is not a neologism but an archaism, dialectal term, professional language word, or a scientific term. In that way the author corrects the erroneous interpretations being present in the papers published before, and shows how difficult Lem’s language can be not only for an average reader, but also for translators and linguists as well.

O pojmowaniu „rozwiązłości” w czasach przedchrześcijańskich: zjawisko prostytucji sakralnej

The article presents the phenomenon of sacred prostitution which was characteristic of many ancient cultures and religions throughout the world. It shows a few of the most important issues connected with the sacred prostitution (also called religious or ritual): its origins (the cult of deities of love and fertility, typical of the pre-Christian cultures); its forms (one-time prostitution as an act of sacrificing one’s virginity or one-time sacrifice of a woman who was no longer a virgin, and constant prostitution practiced by priestesses or temple prostitutes); its main purposes (unification with deity, making a tribute to deity, pledge of the fertility of men, earth and animals by re-enactment of archetypical act of hieros gamos, the divine marriage). The article also analyses the religious anatomy of the phenomenon, basing on the thesis of Mircea Eliade; shows examples of sacred prostitution, taken mainly from The Golden Bough,the canonic work of Sir James George Frazer, and F.S. Pierre Dufour’s History of Prostitution; discusses the taboo of women’s blood on the basis of Jean-Paul Roux’s works; mentions the historical change in the meaning of the word “virgin” applying to Edward Whitmont’s statements; brings up controversies over the judgment of sacred prostitution as a historical phenomenon, referring to Edward Whitmont’s and Georg Baudler’s standpoints.

Rozwiązłość w twórczości czeskiego undergroundu literackiego lat 40. i 50. XX wieku

The article deals with images of promiscuity found in works of the Czech literary underground created in the 1940s and the 1950s. Accordingly, works by Egon Bondy, Jana Krejcarova and Karel Hynek are discussed in this respect. As part of the polemics concerning the era presented in the works of the underground pole representatives, there appears a vulgar dictionary and the subject of tabooized erotic practices like scatology, polygamy, sodomy or incest. The description of these practices in the works of representatives of the Czech literary underground of the 1950s was a form of protest, violating the then rigid moral norms and, at the same time, an expression of artistic provocation in relation to the official literature.