Kuglarze w dramat walą. Adam Polewka i szopkowo-farsowe inspiracje w dramaturgii dwudziestolecia międzywojennego

The article reflects on the connections between the Polish drama of the interwar period with such stage performances as a nativity play, farce, cabaret, and circus. The text attempts to point to the possible inquiries into this important problem of the dramaturgy of the 1920s and 1930s. The author concentrates on Adam Polewka himself and his political farse plays, especially the record of Igrce w Barbakanie, a performance prepared for the Cracow Days in 1938. She reads critically the introduction to the post-war edition of this text. In her opinion, this authorial commentary includes precious information about such stage forms of the interwar period as a farse play and circus.

Przyroda w perspektywie nieantropocentrycznej. O Sadze Puszczy Białowieskiej Simony Kossak

The article offers a non-anthropocentric reading of Simona Kossak’s Saga Puszczy Białowieskiej. It also examines the context of scholarly research into the human activity in the Białowieża Primeval Forest (Otton Hademann, Tomasz Samojlik). The author of the article looks at the generic characteristics of this volume and observes that by using her knowledge of nature and history, Kossak gives her saga a character of a palimpsest and deconstructs certain stereotypes and legends concerning the Forest, including both its human and non-human residents. The author also refers to Kossak’s biography and points to the writer’s ethical engagement to prevent the destruction of the natural environment of the Forest.

Dokument wielkiej zmiany. Busz po polsku Ryszarda Kapuścińskiego w kontekście polskiego reportażu okresu Października 1956

The aim of the article is to discuss the differences and similarities between the reportages from the period of October 1956 and the reportages of Ryszard Kapuściński from the volume Busz po polsku. The works share the following similarities: the conviction of the cognitive value of reporter’s journeys to the province and the belief in the reporter’s power to intervene in the reality. The list of differences, on the other hand, includes: the absence of blame and revindication, the emphasis put on the private fates of individuals, and the assumption that the provincial backwardness is a civilizational problem, not a political one.

Gatunek – postać – widzenie. Poetyka Arfa Macieja Szukiewicza

The article analyzes Arf, a drama by Maciej Szukiewicz and one of the least known pieces from the period of Young Poland. The author demonstrates that the world presented results from a complex textual form that oscillates between a fairy tale and a mystery play. These two genological forms constitute an interpretative lens through which the world of real events in the drama is read. The author uses Szukiewicz to illustrate how the framework of drama and the generic patterns bear upon the way in which the readers perceive the storyline.

Joseph Conrad a polska cisza romantyczna. Próba zbliżenia

The article attempts to extend the existing Polish-language research on the semantics of silence in Joseph Conrad’s works, and to interpret this semantics, in the view of the Polish literary tradition, to which Conrad indicated his debt subtly but quite unambiguously (e.g. in an interview with Marian Dąbrowski from 1914). The author highlights the perspective of the so-called Ukrainian school in the Polish Romantic Literature, suggesting that it was from this imagination (more than from Mickiewicz’s) that the author of Almayer’s Folly could adopt specific figures: “the cosmic night” and “the ontological silence”. It is visible both in the construction of events (Nostromo, Almayer’s Folly, The Shadow-Line) and in the narrative strategies (Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Chance).

Miasto-moloch. Trwałe składowe kreacji przestrzeni Łodzi w literaturze do 1939 roku

The article analyzes texts that represent the artistically diverse literary forms which were written in Polish, German, Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian in Łódź before 1939. The author attempts to identify the constitutive elements of the “Łódź text” (based on Toporow’s typography) and seeks similarities in the ways in which space in a modern industrial city is created in the modernist literature. The space of Łódź created before 1939 is discontinuous, transitory, and filled with its anonymous residents, working masses and peddlers. Łódź, like Manchester, London, Chicago and New York, is a modernist colossal urban space of swindle, extortion and degradation that brings chaos and is impenetrable and oppressive. The language of spatial creation in Łódź, the resulting “Łódź text”, reflects its key components – the problems of industrialization and modernity.

Miron Białoszewski jako miejski rytmoanalityk. O roli spojrzenia w Chamowie

The article analyzes Chamowo, a journal by Miron Białoszewski, in which the writer recounts his experience of the block housing estate in Lizbonska street in Warsaw. The leitmotive in the text is the function of the gaze as Białoszewski devotes special attention to the action of looking through the window of his new flat. By concentrating on this apparently prosaic activity, the author of the article reflects upon the ways in which a city can be perceived and lived in. She also analyses the ways of narrating the urban space and representing the everyday of block housing estates, to include finally the rhythmanalysis of the urban space.

Rola przestrzeni przedstawionej w powieści nowelowej

This article focuses on outlining the function of the presented space in the novella novel as an element constituting its coherence. The term “novella novel” (adopted from Krystyna Jakowska and defined by Elke D’hoker) refers to literary works that are generically situated between a coherently composed collection of short stories and a loose novelistic structure. The following works will serve as the material for the analysis: Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk, Hotel World by Ali Smith and Girls and Women by Alice Munro. These pieces are structured and classified differently. The former two are referred to as novels, while the latter one is called by some critics a novel or a hybrid text that can be perceived as a novel. Ultimately, although sometimes used as an element that maintains coherence, the presented space is always meticulously crafted, and it does not appear as quasi-real or geographically located. It is always valorised, metaphorized and ambiguous. Thus, such a common setting is not a “transparent” or “mechanical” element that unifies these stories, but rather one of the many aspects of the process that constitutes coherence of novels constructed in such a way, which remains open to interpretation.

Uchodźcy u „bram Europy”. Na Lampedusie Jarosława Mikołajewskiego

The article discusses the refugee crisis in Europe, which has come to be symbolized by an Italian island of Lampedusa. The author of the article analyses two pieces by Jarosław Mikołajewski, a reportage Wielki przypływ [Great high tide] and a children’s story Wędrówka Nabu [Nabu’s Wandering], and seeks the answers to the following questions. What image of Lampedusa emerges from the reportage? What is the impact of the refugee crisis upon the lives of its residents? And finally, what is their attitude to the Other? Following Mikołajewski’s thinking, the author reflects on the challenges that the immigrants “at the gates of Europe” pose. In her opinion, Mikołajewski’s stance is open and emphatic. The aim of introducing the theme of migrants into children’s books is to teach them to be responsible for others.

Urbanalia jako propozycja genologiczna w ramach humanistycznych studiów miejskich

The article discusses the idea of urban genres as forms of textualization of urban spaces, as proposed by Katarzyna Szalewska in her book Urbanalia – miasto i jego teksty: Humanistyczne studia miejskie (Gdańsk 2017). The proposed category of ‘urbanalia’ describes the urban genological land scape that comprises verbal and non-verbal utterances. Szalewska redefines such urban genres as passage, anecdote, spacerownik, urban legend, faits divers, picture, physiology, and tableaux, thus completing the urban studies with the literary methodology. In addition, the forms described by the author are characterized by high artistic and folkloristic qualities.