Konrad Wallenrod Research Articles

Поэзия А. Мицкевича в камерно-вокальном творчестве С. Монюшко

Adam Mickiewicz’s poetry attracted many composers, but it left the most noticeable trace in the work of Stanisław Moniuszko, who turned to lyrical poems, ballads, sonnets, as well as excerpts from the poems Konrad Wallenrod and Dziady. Fragments of them were also used by the composer in romances included in various issues of his Home Songbooks (Śpiewnik domowy), and as a result, the texts of Mickiewicz accompanied Moniuszko from the very first works to those published posthumously. The composer’s works based on Mickiewicz’s poems, like the original source itself, represent completely different forms and genres, but they are all in the halo of Polish romantic creativity and one aesthetic and patriotic concept. The purpose of the work is to consider various ways of implementing the ballad genre and the genre of musical portrait in Stanisław Moniuszko’s chamber-vocal works based on Adam Mickiewicz’s poems. Among Moniuszko’s numerous appeals to Mickiewicz’s poetry (more than 20 works), the sixth issue in the series of Home Songbooks, written entirely on the poet’s texts, stands out. A special place in it is occupied by the ballad Fish (Rybka, 1859) based on the text of the poet’s youth work of the same name, representing the composer’s chamber vocal style in the most perfect form and written with a truly symphonic scope. The dynamic musical narrative follows all the twists and turns of the plot, its dramaturgy is based on the comparison of contrasting images, direct speech, dialogues of the characters, and replicas from the author, embodying the specifics of the poetic original. The influence of ideological and aesthetic views associated primarily with folklore and patriotic themes, the poetics and topos of Mickiewicz manifested itself in many ways in Moniuszko’s chamber-vocal works, which allows us to draw conclusions about the synthesis of meanings and symbols characteristic of romantic art.

ARTISTIC FICTION AND DOCUMENTARY BASIS IN THE POEM OF A. MITZKEVICH "KONRAD WALLENROD"

The need to update the research of fiction that uses real facts, historical events and names is substantiated. The history of the creation of A. Mickiewicz's poem "Konrad Wallenrod" is considered in the context of social and political circumstances of the first half of the 19th century in Belarus and documentary facts from the author's biography. Based on the analysis of the work, the ratio of documentary facts borrowed from historical chronicles and the author's fiction in the text is determined. The impact of the work on the value and moral dominants of that time, as well as modern society, is analyzed. The reasons for the controversial assessment of the work by contemporaries and descendants are considered. Conclusions are made about the priority role of author's fantasy and fiction in high artistic texts.

ВІД ІДЕОЛОГІЗАЦІЇ ДО ПАТРІОТИЗМУ: РЕЦЕПЦІЇ МОДЕЛІ А. МІЦКЕВИЧА «ПОЕТ І НАРОД» В УКРАЇНСЬКІЙ ПИСЬМЕННИЦЬКІЙ КРИТИЦІ ХХ – ПОЧАТКУ ХХІ СТ.

The article is devoted to the research of reception of A. Mickiewicz’s model “the Poet and the People” in twentieth- century Ukrainian writers’ criticism. The writers traced the canon of relations between the artist and society created by A. Mickiewicz, which had a profound influence on the literature of Polish Romanticism. Considering the reception of the ‘poet and people’ paradigm, the authors of the article note that Ukrainian poets of the Soviet period were forced to dissect certain artistic phenomena through the prism of the communist ideology of the time. One of the most consistent and productive interpreters of A. Mickіewіcz among Ukrainian writers was M. Rylskyi. He left a considerable inheritance of literature and publicist articles about the Polish poet. M. Rylskyi as a critic gave the deepest scientific standards to the analysis of the poetics of A. Mickіewіcz’s works. He did not cast aside the generally accepted scheme of the creative evolution of the Polish poet but cautioned researchers from the monolinear measuring of it. M. Rylskyi was the first one in Ukrainian Mickіewіcz Studies who noticed that mixing of styles was inherent in А. Mickіewіcz’s works during all of his creative life. M. Rylskyi allowed the identification of the poet Konrad Wallenrod with A. Mickiewicz himself, warning that after all the person of the hero does not reflect and cannot reflect the personality of the author. M. Rylskyi described Konrad Wallenrod as mysterious and contradictory, as was A. Mickiewicz. The article also compares the interpretations of M. Rylskyi and Polish researchers and writers, in particular, Maria Cieśla-Korytowska and Jan Kasprowicz. The authors trace that the Ukrainian poet D. Pavlychko was the first in Ukrainian literary criticism to draw attention to the idea of Europe in the artistic and ideological system of A. Mickiewicz as the idea of the Fatherland.

„Antywyraizacja” w [„Dziadach”] Juliusza Słowackiego

The author of the paper aims to indicate a new way of interpreting Juliusz Słowacki’s [“Dziady”] by using a new aesthetic-literary trend known as the Slavic anti-twist. So far, literary scholars have analyzed this dramatic fragment mainly from the genesis perspective or the antagonism of the bards. They believed that through the greatest works of Adam Mickiewicz, such as “Dziady”, “Pan Tadeusz” and “Konrad Wallenrod”, Słowacki expressed his own mystical intentions. During the period of [“Dziady”] creation, the poet was keenly interested in the Slavic culture, references to which often appeared in his genesis texts. The situation is similar with [“Dziady”] where one can find elements of the Slavic anti-subjugation.

“КОНРАД ВАЛЛЕНРОД” АДАМА МІЦКЕВИЧА В ІНТЕРПРЕТАЦІЇ ЛЕСІ УКРАЇНКИ

The article presents Lesia Ukrainka’s Prometheusism on the example of her translation of the historical story in the poems Konrad Wallenrod by Adam Mickiewicz. There are parallels between the romantic tradition of the Polish literary school and the Ukrainian so-called neo-romantics in the first half of the twentieth century to which Lesya Ukrainka belonged. The author of the translation deliberately chose a fragment in the description of a girl from Lithuania who is compared to the local river Vilija, and showed the tragedy of women’s destiny full of patriotic motives. At the same time, the heroism of a woman-citizen, a woman- artist arouses admiration and awakens hope for the speedy liberation of the enslaved people. Mickiewicz’s poetic lines translated into Ukrainian opened new perspectives for neo-romantics to combine both national and European traditions, and at the same time pointed to the tragedy of national histories. Lesya Ukrainka went beyond the tragedy of the final scene of Mickiewicz’s drama in her creative conception of the reinterpretation. Proceeding from the vicious circle of writing literary works exclusively “for domestic use” the poet sought to awaken the national consciousness in society to enable the synthesis of coexistence with other cultures. She took on the mission of ancient Prometheus symbolizing not only a rebellion against the power or charity towards the people, but also the revival of hope for salvation from imminent death. Following romantic motives she gives them a rebellious spirit, purposeful protests, which from the individual thoughts of the progressive groups were to move to the community level, which in literature is expressed in the ideas of Prometheusism. It is assumed that tangible natural kinship of Polish and native languages grew in Lesya Ukrainka’s work from the Volyn roots where noble traditions were very strong and had a decisive influence on the language picture of the writer. The poetic material is especially valuable from an artistic point of view since it is based on samples of oral folk art, in particular the song, which can be traced not only in the original but also in translation.

Muzycznoliteracki agon tożsamości: „Konrad Wallenrod”

Agon śpiewaczy − topos organizujący centralną scenę Konrada Wallenroda, tj. Ucztę − stanowi klucz do muzycznoliterackiej interpretacji poematu Mickiewicza. Tradycje homerycka, paulińska i trubadursko-truwerska pozwalają dostrzec w śpiewaczych zmaganiach uczestników turnieju bój, którego stawką jest z jednej strony tożsamość Konrada-Alfa, a z drugiej – tożsamość gatunkowa „pieśni o Aldony losach”. Artykuł problematyzuje przekonanie o czystej konwencjonalności muzycznych sygnałów genologicznych tekstu i pokazuje korzyści z jego zawieszenia w badaniu, co rzuca nowe światło na balladę Alpuhara.

Pobyt Adama Mickiewicza w Rosji w świetle Zapisków Ksenofonta Polewoja

This paper presents The Notes (published in Saint Petersburg, 1888) by Xenophon Polevoy (1801–1867), Nikolai’s brother, from a perspective of Adam Mickiewicz’s stay in Russia. It concerns Mickiewicz’s meetings with the Russian poets (A. Pushkin, I. Kozlov and others) in 1825 and 1826, his relations with them and the reception of Crimean Sonnets and Konrad Wallenrod in Russia. Polevoy highly values the Polish poet and considers his contacts with Russians to be friendly. An interpretive background is the periodical “Moskovskij tielegraf”.

Chopin Fragments: Narrative Voice in the First Ballade

This article considers the problem of narration in a collection of works gathered around Chopin's Ballade in G Minor, op. 23: Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak, Poe's “The Raven,” Mickiewicz's Konrad Wallenrod, Dickens's The Chimes, and Władysław Szpilman's The Pianist along with its cinematic adaptation by Roman Polanski. Chopin's Ballade is featured prominently in the two movies under consideration, while the remaining works are either influential for the composer (Konrad Wallenrod) or develop themes common to the Ballade. Study of narration in these works reveals that the narrator can be just as unstable in literary texts as in musical ones. The problems of narration that have been imputed to music are problems of narration itself. Regarding the era of Chopin's Ballade, these problems also point to unstable models of subjectivity, which the logic of narrative glosses over.

“Sailing towards Poland” with Joseph Conrad by Jean M. Szczypien

Reviewed by: “Sailing towards Poland” with Joseph Conrad by Jean M. Szczypien Mark D. Larabee (bio) Jean M. Szczypien. “Sailing towards Poland” with Joseph Conrad. New York: Peter Lang, 2017. xx + 269 pp. ISBN: 9781433127526. Jean Szczypien’s “Sailing towards Poland” with Joseph Conrad begins by pointing to a puzzling contradiction. On one hand, as Conrad declared in 1915, Polish literature was “everything” for him (1), the foundation of his upbringing. On the other hand, curiously, references in A Personal Record to what he had read in his youth omit the Polish authors who supposedly had meant so much to him. Readers of Conrad not already familiar with Polish literary history (or scholarship in Polish) may well miss this contradiction, whose key this book so artfully discloses: how subtly but thoroughly Conrad wove Polish sources into his writing and his life. “Sailing towards Poland” charts a course of hidden links between Conrad and Poland that winds through history, biography, texts, and intertexts. As a result, Szczypien shows how recognizing Conrad’s Polish literary references opens new insights into his authorial practices and literary themes, as well as his sense of identity and Polish nationhood. Szczypien takes the title of her book from a letter that Conrad wrote to his father’s friend Stefan Buszczyński in 1883, in which he recalls Buszczyński telling the young Conrad on his leaving Cracow, “wherever you may sail you are sailing towards Poland!” Conrad in return declares in his letter (writing in Polish), “That I have never forgotten, and never will forget!” (3). Szczypien’s extensive research unearths those memories not just by establishing lines of influence or cataloging allusions per se, but instead by capitalizing on theories of intertextuality articulated by Michael Riffaterre and Julia Kristeva. For example, it was as early as 1960 that scholars first noted “reverberations” or “verbal echoes” of Adam Mickiewicz’s patriotic narrative poem Konrad Wallenrod in Almayer’s Folly (33). However, Szczypien broadens our view by situating Conrad’s first novel alongside Mickiewicz’s poem, A Personal Record, and Virgil’s Aeneid. In so doing, she indicates something larger than thematic parallelism at stake: what Riffaterre, in Fictional Truth (1990) calls “the truth of the text” (Szczypien 41). In general, this truth in Conrad’s writing emerges through mechanisms of symbolism activated by those seemingly unobtrusive references to subtexts. For Szczypien, consequently, in the case of Conrad’s echoes of Konrad Wallenrod he signals “resolutely, if indirectly, that he, too, is serving his fatherland” through a “mission” as “divine” as Aeneas’s (38). In such a reading of “hidden treasure” (42) concealed in Conrad’s work—representative of this volume as a whole—Szczypien fills in gaps in earlier [End Page 198] studies and suggests answers to questions previously left unresolved (such as why, for Ian Watt, Conrad treats Almayer unsympathetically). Just as the Aeneid reverberates in Almayer’s Folly, as Szczypien goes on to show, the Iliad resounds in Lord Jim via Alexander Fredro’s play Zemsta (Revenge), which Conrad may have seen performed in 1871. To elaborate these connections, Szczypien’s analysis ranges across such an array of materials as previous criticism of Lord Jim, Apollo Korzeniowski’s poetry, and characters in Revenge; images of Conrad’s manuscript; an 1807 allegorical portrayal of the partition of Poland; and Andrzej Wajda’s 2002 film version of Fredro’s play. The result not only revises our understanding of Stein—“not as cultured and erudite but as a talkative, ridiculous figure whose decisions produce catastrophic results” (51)—but also furthers other revelations: of Conrad’s critique of Romanticism, his praise of the “grand dignity of his father and Romantic patriots like him” (Szczypien 68), and his disapproving attitudes towards Tadeusz Bobrowski. In a characteristic move that “[makes] possible an otherwise unacceptable metaphor” (Riffaterre 147), it is only through the workings of intertextuality that Conrad could critique Bobrowski by way of Stein (Szczypien 68). The consequences of Szczypien’s study of Almayer’s Folly grow from her close examination of the single phrase “It has set at last.” Throughout this book, Szczypien works outward from such potentially inconspicuous but crucial pieces of evidence. “Sailing towards Poland” is thus...

Koncepcja czasu cyklicznego w Maju Karela Hynka Máchy wobec koncepcji czasu linearnego w Konradzie Wallenrodzie Adama Mickiewicza

In the article I analyze the concept of cyclical time as it appears in Maj by Karel Hynek Macha. This type of time, described as “Holy time” according to Eliade’s definition, is compared with the linear (historical) time created by Adam Mickiewicz in one of his most influential works, namely Konrad Wallenrod. The different creation of time in the text of the Czech romantic prove that May is an original work of art, not only a compilation of themes and motifs borrowed from Polish romantic literature, as it is often claimed.

Między Wallenrodem a Irydionem. Rzecz o Rozdzióbią nas kruki, wrony… Stefana Żeromskiego

In the opinion of the author of this article, Żeromski, showing a tragic picture of the January Uprising in Ravens and Crows Will Peck Us to Pieces, runs very skillfully polemic with the views of Stanislaw Tarnowski, both political and social, which are summarized in the hearing From the experiences and reflections, as well as the aesthetic-literary ones, expressed among other things in the works devoted to Arthur Grottger, Polish romantics or in reviews of Sienkiewicz’s historical novels. Irydion and Konrad Wallenrod play a special role in the intricate network of intertextual references presenting in Żeromski’s story. Count Stanislaw Tarnowski spoke many times about these literary works, occupying a unique position in the minds of Poles living in the 19th century. His writings designate the area of controversy, which is the foundation of imaginative and ideological construction of Żeromski’s story Ravens and Crows Will Peck Us to Pieces.

Od liryki do ekstazy: Chopinowskie repryzy-apoteozy i ich analogie w twórczości Liszta / From the Lyrical to the Ecstatic: Chopin’s Reprise-Apotheoses and Their Analogies in the Works of Liszt

The subject of the present study is a specific type of thematic metamorphosis, in which the initially lyrical theme transforms into its ecstatic or heroic, sublime alter ego and which usually appears as the final culmination of the work. Three questions were asked regarding Chopin: how did the evolution of the technique of thematic metamorphoses develop and what was its formal-expressive and aesthetic context like?; which technical and composing techniques can be regarded as characteristic of the technique of thematic metamorphoses?; and how does the relationship between Chopin’s conception of “reprise-apotheosis” and Liszt’s final “syntheses-apotheoses” develop? The object of observation are works of the mature stage of Chopin’s creative activity, representing narrative-dramatic genres: Ballad in G minor op. 23 (1833), Ballad in A flat major op. 47 (1841), Ballad in F minor op. 52 (1842-1843), Barcarolle in F sharp major op. 60 (1845--1846) and Polonaise-fantasia in A flat major op. 61 (1846). The first example of thematic metamorphosis in Chopin can be found in the Ballad in G minor. The place of thematic metamorphoses compared with the formal level of the work shows their more transformative than recapitulative function. In the Ballad in A flat major the tendency to strengthen the dramatic effect of thematic metamorphoses leads to an ecstatic reprise – the final apotheosis, the “last word” of the whole sequence of musical occurrences: the initial lyrical phrase undergoes a metamorphosis and returns in an ecstatic form in a short reprise, which is the ultimate culmination of the composition. The Ballad in F minor restores the serious, dramatic tone of the Ballad in G minor, as well as the conception of the metamorphosis of the second, lyrical theme; at the same time Chopin does not give up the tendency – developed in the Ballad A flat major – to place the metamorphosis of the lyrical into the ecstatic in the fi nal, reprise stage of the composition. In the works composed in the final stage of transformation of Chopin’s style the strategy demonstrated in the Ballad in A flat major was combined with the tendencies governing thematic metamorphoses in the Ballads in G minor and F minor. And thus, in the Barcarolle in F sharp major and in the Polonaise-fantasia in A flat major the principle of transformation of the lyrical into the ecstatic was combined with the tendency to return in the reprise of themes, originally expressed in different keys, to the primary key of the work. This is how the ending was composed, which can be called “reprise-apotheosis”. Lyrical themes, which return as transformed into ecstatic apotheoses in the reprise parts, show many features in common: they have triple meter, most of them being in trochaic rhythms; they are in major keys and are built in a similar way (they contain a motif consisting of an ascending pure fourth, after which follows a descending second). It is significant that all cases of thematic metamorphoses are present in those works by Chopin which suggest narrative-literary associations and can be interpreted as the musical metaphor of one of the most signifi cant archetypes in Polish Romanticism: transformations of the main characters in Adam Mickiewicz’s Konrad Wallenrod and Dziady [Forefathers’ Eve] and in Juliusz Sowacki’s Kordian. Chopin’s concept of the fi nal “grand apotheosis” anticipated Liszt’s sublime reprisesynthesis, which crowns the symphonic poem Les Preludes. Does, however, the clear chronological anticipation indicate Chopin’s infl uence? Or rather, the two masters may have developed the same type of musical narrative independently of each other? The Chopin-Liszt model of reprise-apotheosis became attractive to many composers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its impact, which infl uenced masters of the late Romantic piano concerto (Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov), also going beyond the boundaries of the genre. Skriabin broadened the principle of final apotheosis to include piano sonatas (IV Piano Sonata in F sharp major) and The Poem of Ecstasy, while Claude Debussy based the musical dramatics of The Island of Joy on the fascinating metamorphosis of the lyrical theme with an almost Chopinesque tone. Metamorphoses of the lyrical into the ecstatic can be found in many symphonic works of the fin de siècle (II Symphony by Karol Szymanowski, Variations on the Theme of Mozart by Max Reger), while the captivating finals of Rachmaninov’s concertos became an attractive model for George Gershwin (Piano Concerto in F major) and many composers of fim music.

Adam Mickiewiczs „Konrad Wallenrod“ und Aleksandr Griboedovs „Gore ot urna“

Unlike the well known and often studied personal and literary relationship between Pushkin and Mickiewicz the Polish national poet's connection with Griboyedov does not belong to the items on the agenda of Slavic research. That may have to do with the fact that in spite of their personal knowledge, of their common friends (Bulgarin, Vyazemsky) and of their popularity in the contemporary literary life of Moscow and Petersburg both poets do not take notice of each other. The article departs from Stefan Chwin's statement that notwithstanding the lack of a genetic dependence the Polish romantic tale Konrad Wallenrod and the Russian neoclassical comedy Wit from woe both are typologically connected. Written in a revolutionary atmosphere, they show the psychosocial phenomena of public conspiracy (a term borrowed from Mickiewicz's Parisian lectures) from a different point-of-view. The following article shows the problems in relation with Mickiewicz's stay in Russia and discuss the presumable reasons of the mutual absence of interest and attention. The comparative analysis takes aim to deliver further analogies and differences between both works and the circumstances of their production and reception.

Lukan in Prešeren

V članku avtorica postavlja hipotezo, da je med rimske pesniške zglede, ki so vplivali na Prešerna med pisanjem Krsta pri Savici, treba prišteti tudi epika M. A. Lukana. Prešeren naj bi od Lukana prevzel tako slogovne kot emotivne in imaginativne prvine; med temi, globljimi vplivi velja omeniti zlasti motivno-tematske sestavine (motiv državljanske vojne, motiv poraženca, ki se zateče k ljubljeni ženski, a ga usoda odtrga od nje).

Konrado Valenrodo dvinarės struktūros

The analysis of A. Mickiewicz’s poem ’’Konrad Wallenrod” presented in the article illustrates the two fold structures typical of Baltic mythology that present themselves in the poem through the figures of Alban and Konrad. Baltic mythology manifests a kind of dyads, whose left member is older and is connected with magic, chtonic space and water, while the right member is younger and is connected with secular matters, war, celestial sphere and fire. Baltic mythology manifests such dyads in pairs of Patolas Patrimpas, Brutenis-Videvutis, kaukas-aitvaras, Devil-God, etc. This type of dyad is presented in the poem through the Alban-Konrad pair. The first member, being the older one, is connected with sacred matters while the second, being the younger one, represents war and secular matters.

Echoes from Konrad Wallenrod in Almayer's Folly and a Personal Record

That Konrad Korzeniowski became a literary lion known as Joseph Conrad has been quite fully acknowledged, but the extent to which he was an artistic fox masterfully incorporating images from Polish literature into his work has not been adequately discerned. Korzeniowski buried nuggets from Adam Mickiewicz's Konrad Wallenrod (1828) in Almayer's Folly (1895), his first novel, and in one of his autobiographies, A Personal Record (1912) (when discussing the ending of his sea career and the beginning of his writing life). By secreting part of his Polish cultural heritage in these pages Conrad was majestically serving his fatherland although writing in English. A discussion of intertextual theory and of some of the doubleness that is Polish in Almayer's Folly and A Personal Record provides a "sense" of what Michael Riffaterre describes as an "unlocking" or "uncovering... equivalent to a pattern of truth." Questions posed about aspects of Almayer's Folly by such eminent Conradian scholars as Ian Watt and Yves Hervouet are answered. The conclusion reached is that if one is to understand Conrad and to obtain the most that is to be had from his writings, one must have an understanding and an appreciation of Polish literature and culture.

Echoes from Konrad Wallenrod in Almayer's Folly and a Personal Record

Echoes from Konrad Wallenrod in Almayer's Folly and a Personal Record

Mickiewicz' Konrad Wallenrod: An Allegory of the Conflict between Politics and Art

Mickiewicz' Konrad Wallenrod: An Allegory of the Conflict between Politics and Art

Konrad Wallenrod and other writings of Adam Mickiewicz

Konrad Wallenrod and other writings of Adam Mickiewicz

<italic>Konrad Wallenrod and Other Writings of Adam Mickiewicz</italic>. Translated from the Polish by Jewell Parish, Dorothea Prall Radin, George Rapall Noyes and others. (University of California Press)

<italic>Konrad Wallenrod and Other Writings of Adam Mickiewicz</italic>. Translated from the Polish by Jewell Parish, Dorothea Prall Radin, George Rapall Noyes and others. (University of California Press)