Polish Literary Criticism Research Articles

Flaubert in the eyes of nineteenth-century Polish literary critics

Flaubert in the eyes of nineteenth-century Polish literary critics

Gustave Flaubert in Poland (Reception History from 1910 to 1939)

The aim of the article is to reconstruct the main directions of Flaubert’s reception in Polish literary criticism at the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, the ideological debates of the 19th-century critics gave way to essayistic and academic considerations. In the rich material, three main parts can be distinguished. Firstly, the already forgotten works by Helena Frejlich, which introduced Flaubert’s correspondence to literary studies. Frejlich was one of the first to critically examine Flaubert’s letters to Colet, finding in them not only a rich testimony to the everyday life of the great writer, but also a special treatise on aesthetics. Secondly, a fundamental essay by Jan Parandowski should be mentioned, which for many years determined how Flaubert was read in Poland. It is to Parandowski that we owe inspirational remarks on the subject of Flaubert’s style, impersonal literature or the poetics of a realistic novel. Thirdly, we should remember scattered interpretative works; the authors (e.g. Lorentowicz, Rogowicz, Topoliński) not only analyzed selected works by Flaubert, but also introduced comparative issues into their essays, comparing Flaubert with Żeromski. Undoubtedly, the first decades of the 20th century influenced the post-war shape of Flaubert’s reception in Poland. The article concludes with a discussion of Iwieński’s preface to the 1912 translation of Madame Bovary. Iwieński repeats the observations previously formulated by other critics, but at the same time opens an important period of reflection on the status of Flaubert’s literary translations in Poland.

Szybkość świata, wolność słów – gubione Krystyny Miłobędzkiej w kontekście pojęcia szybkości i procesualności lektury

The author of the article refers to Derrida’s concept of play in the discourse of human sciences and Polish literary criticism: Anna Kałuża, Tymoteusz Karpowicz, and Stanisław Barańczak attempt to interpret poetry of Krystyna Miłobędzka, especially her book entitled gubione [lost]. The article focuses of issues such as speed and fluency in the context of modern literature.

ПОЛЬСЬКА ПРЕСА ПРО ВАСИЛЯ СТЕФАНИКА: ПРИЖИТТЄВІ ПУБЛІКАЦІЇ

The article is devoted to the study of Polish periodicals of 1899–1931 for the presence of publications about V. Stefanyk. In Stefanyk studies, literary criticism works devoted to the works of Vasyl Stefanyk and Polish translations of his works were studied, but the issues of intravital publications have not been highlighted yet separately. The work of the Ukrainian novelist was the subject of interest on a range of Polish scholars, literary critics, and translators. The reviews of V. Stefanyk’s works were published in a number of popular Polish periodicals, in particular “Czas”, “Krytyka”, “Nowa Reforma”, “Przegląd Powszechny”, “Życie”, “Ogniwo”, “Prawda”, “Pamiętnik Warszawski”, “Chwila”, “Promień”, which were published in three cities associated with Ukrainian and Polish cultures, namely: Warsaw, Krakow and Lviv. The authors of these reviews noted the V. Stefanyk’s talent originality, who, in his characteristic expressionist way, managed in the novella form to show the social-ideological issues of that time period in the Ukrainian national and, at the same time, universal dimension. A number of reviews belong to Wacław Moraczewski, who had an essential influence on the shaping of the young Ukrainian writer V. Stefanyk, and inscribed his works in the European context, emphasizing the national features of his talent. Polish translations of Stefanyk’s novellas were published in Polish periodicals, almost simultaneously with their Ukrainian publications. It has been found that, for ideological reasons, critical reviews of Ukrainian literary critics in Polish periodicals have not been studied by a number of Ukrainian researchers. All the reviews of V. Stefanyk’s work in Polish periodicals that have been discussed in the article, will help to clarify the Ukrainian writers’ work reception by Polish literary critics and to find out the thematic direction of the press in which they were published. Keywords:Vasyl Stefanyk, Polish press, Polish literary environment, reviews, popularization, thematic specialization of the press.

ІСТОРИЧНА ПРОЗА МІХАЛА ЧАЙКОВСЬКОГО У КОНТЕКСТІ ЕСТЕТИЧНИХ ШУКАНЬ «УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ ШКОЛИ»

The article analyses the visions of Polish literary critics, attesting to a certain reception of the life path as well as the comprehension of Michal Tchaikovsky’s works in the context of the Polish Romanticism “Ukrainian school”. The genre-thematic and compositional features of the prose are also outlined, the author’s narrative strategy is analysed, and both ideological and aesthetic writer views and his literary contacts are shown. The significance of his creativity and activity through the implementation of the romantic idea is clarified. Tchaikovsky’s creation of a prose formula for Romantic Ukrainianism, the search for new forms of transferring Ukrainian stereotypes to Polish soil is still poorly understood. Various manifestations of reception and prose typology, M. Tchaikovsky’s artistic skill in the context of the “Ukrainian school” became the subject of the research. The author’s world-views were taken into account while studying Tchaikovsky’s prose which made it possible to systematically outline the problems, poetic and genre features of the works. The embodiment of the romantic ethnic hero features, a look on the Cossacks are expressed both in the works themselves and in the author’s prefaces, comments, notes making up an integral part of the writer’s creative achievements. M. Tchaikovsky is considered the father of a Polish historical novel. Mythologized vision of history and modern Polish-Ukrainian relations are reflected in various prose forms – diary, gavendas (“Gavendas”, “Legends”, “The Poles and Poles Strange Life”), adventure stories (“Wernygora”, “Kirdzhali”, “Stefan Charnetsky”, “Koshovata”, “Ovruchanyn”, “Hetman of Ukraine”), modern stories (“The Gilovs”, “Anna”), pamphlets (“Bulgaria”, “Nemolyaka”, “Bosnia”, “From Hetman Lach Times”). Slavic-Turkish tales of the Danube Cossacks whose manuscripts were burned in Istanbul remain still unknown. The movement of life was the M. Tchaikovsky environment namely a direct action in which one sees scope, confidence, and desire to bring to life all that he dreamed of. The author of “Wernygora” realised his longing for ancient life through literary activity, he dreamed of Ukraine, and created a world he wanted to see around him. The Cossacks, Slavophilism and colourful personalities have become he sources of M. Tchaikovsky’s works. The moment of literary creativity comes in the periods when the social roles of the politician and the soldier have been lost. The paper is another step towards understanding the place and role of M. Tchaikovsky’s works in Polish romanticism through the prism of historical prose. It is an attempt to read the works scientifically in the context of historical, social and cultural factors at the theoretical level. Research is a contribution to the set of theoretical knowledge of hermeneutics, theory of literature, social anthropology.

ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ СИМВОЛІКИ ТВАРИН У ПОЛЬСЬКОМУ ЛІТЕРАТУРОЗНАВСТВІ

У статті аналізуються праці польських літературознавців, присвяче-ні зображенню тварин та їх символіці в літературі. Автор підкреслює, що літературознавці по-різному окреслюють специфіку та сутність символі-ки образів тварин. Тим не менш, можна виділити два напрямки символі-ки тварин у літературі: антропоморфізм (проектування людських якостей на тварини) та зооморфізм (уявлення людей як тварин). Антропоморфізм цілісно не відтворює природнє життя тварин, бо антропоморфічний текст завжди має на меті увиразнити типові риси схожості між твариною та людиною. Основним об’єктом зооморфічного тексту виступає людина. Приписувані їй бестіарні риси зазвичай дозволяють авторові художнього твору більш детально та точно, ніж в антропоморфічному тексті, змалювати і тварину. Таким чином, змальовується водночас характер і людини, і тварини. Отже, антропоморфізм і зооморфізм втілюють різні підходи до подолання відмінностей між людьми і тваринами, а також до трактування схожості між ними. Наголошується, що важливою проблемою символіки тварин є презентація у літературних творах питання: чи можливе взаєморозуміння між людиною та твариною. Автор констатує, що багато польських літературознавців присвятили свої праці дослідженню символіки образів тварин у польській і світовій літературі. Наведені приклади вказують на те, що у польському літературознавстві є праці, у яких аналізується так звана історія зображення тварин у літературі загалом (К. Ґурскі, А. Мартушевска, В. Пшибила, П. Зих, В. Варгас, К. Обремскі, Ґ. Скотніцка), символічне використання образу певної тварини у творі (Л. Ґінкова, А. Хоєцкі), символіка тварин у творах конкретного автора (К. Ґурскі, Ю. Бахуж, Я. Дата) або конкретної літературної епохи (С. Кобєлюс, А. Мартушевска, А. Осіньска-Шпур, Я. Котарска, М. Слівіньскі, В. Ґутовскі, Е. Кузьма, Д. Домбровска).

ЗАБУТІ ІМЕНА ПОЛЬСЬКОЇ ЛІТЕРАТУРИ – КАЗІМЄЖ ТРУХАНОВСЬКИЙ

Polish literature is one of the leading positions not only in the Slavic world, but also well-presented at the global level. The article is devoted to the Polish writer of the middle of the twentieth century, whose name is unknown to the Ukrainian narratee, but his works are extremely interesting. The reasons why some writers do not fall into the field of wide-ranging research are different. In the case of the Kazimierz Trukhanovsky’s works, this is an insufficient research of the Polish literary criticism, the researchers are writing about it only now. Returning the names of interesting writers and attracting attention to their works is an actual and interesting task.The creative legacy of K. Trukhanovsky is quite extensive – it’s a romance cycle, story and short stories, individual novels. Philosophy, reflection and utopia are the most extensive characteristics of the writer’s works. The imagery and aesthetic background of the novels become clearer if we attract the work of artists, whose leading motive of creativity was the hell and the wandering of human souls in the search of divine light. The writer applied to mythologization and the magic properties of time-space measurements in the novel. Mythological and literary traditions are superimposed, as a result of which the author creates a complicated model of a labyrinthine novel.

Die Rezeption und der Streit um den Roman "Im Westen nichts Neues" von E.M. Remarque in der literarischen Öffentlichkeit des Vorkriegspolen

The controversy and disputes which appeared in the Polish literary criticism of the 1930s after the publication of the Polish version of Remarque's famous novel „All Quiet on the Western Front“ were based on specified political grounds. The National Democratic press, for instance, was entirely against Remarque's book and would demand to have it banned altogether. The response of the military magazines was more differentiated. The author was reproached with commonplaceness and „Germanic fetor“, however, on the other hand, he was praised for describing the firmness of the German soldiers, the sense of comradeship and the exemplary attitude of the privates towards the officers. The literary critics of the communist orientation, clustered around „Literary Monthly“ (Wat, Zawadzki) emphatically refused to acknowledge the book, which was a consequence of their total rejection of the pacifist literature of that time. This point was argued by the representatives of the liberal and pacifist intellectuals who generally approved of the book, some being even enthusiastic about it (eg. Stempowski). In this way, the polarity of political attitudes of the recipients became more apparent (vide Wat-Słonimski polemics). Thanks to it, Remarque's novel became, in a way, a „gauge“ and, at the same time, a catalyst of the public feeling of the Polish intellectuals in the early 1930s.

Książka popularnonaukowa dla dzieci i młodzieży w oczach krytyków — rekonesans badawczy

POPULAR SCIENCE BOOK FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS IN THE EYES OF CRITICS — A RESEARCH RECONNAISSANCEThe aim of the article is to determine the position of popular science books for children and young people in Polish literary criticism and book studies, and to specify the terminology used by scholars. Opinions about such books have been formulated by theorists and practitioners of children’s books since the 19th century, with the criteria of their assessment changing in accordance with the current literary fashions and trends in pedagogy. Critics’ interest in such works was strong until the end of the 19th century, when books for children were expected mainly to serve utilitarian purposes. The phenomenon intensified especially in the era of positivism; among the most enthusiastic advocates of popular science books were Adolf Dygasiński and the co-editor of Bluszcz Maria Ilnicka. The stature of popular science books is also evidenced by the fact that their titles often appeared in recommended bibliographies at the time. A later change in the perception of the tasks of literature for the youngest readers diminished the critics’ interest in such works. In addition, there was a growing rift between literary criticism and pedagogical-library criticism. In communist Poland the perception of popular science books was also affected by the promotion of works not suited to the expectations and needs of the readers. Today, the stature of popular science books rises with their market success and innovative projects in the area. That is why there are numerous reviews of such works in professional journals Guliwer, Nowe Książki, Świat Książki Dziecięcej etc. and websites Mądre książki, 10 książek: na start do nauki etc. as well as studies devoted to the history and evolution in the content and editorial form of such publications, and their usefulness in the teaching and self-education of young readers.

Pojęcie modernizmu w młodopolskiej krytyce literackiej

The notion of modernism in Polish literary criticism at the turn of the 20th century was characterized, as the author of the article proves, by ambiguity. The notion was understood and explained differently and was used in various contexts which quite often contradict each other. This imprecise term referred to many phenomena: from itnietzscheanism and the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, by the meaning of “naked soul” and “art for art’s sake” to the decadent movement, mysticism and symbolism. Even though Young Polish critics (propagators of “new art” as well as its critics) defined modernism in a multi-faceted way (from the point of view of their ideological standpoints and preferred esthetics values) it has been linked by aversion to the name, the awareness of crisis of European culture and middle-class morality and necessity of upgrading art.

Fikcje krytycznoliterackie. Polemika Wacława Borowego i Manfreda Kridla

The paper The Fictions of Literary Criticism refers to a polemic between Manfred Kridl and Waclaw Borowy which was conducted in several articles published in the years 1936–1957. The polemic played a significant role in the development of modern Polish literary criticism. The matter of dispute was a new method of literary criticism announced by Kridl in his renowned Introduction to the Research of Literary Work (1936). The main topics of the discussion were the problems of the literary process, the evaluation of a literary work and the uses of scientific methods in humanities. The paper’s author pays attention especially to the rhetorical and literary means of argumentation which were used in the creation of this unusual form of non-fiction.

Traktaty pedagogiczne Honoraty z Wiśniowskich Zapovej i Klementyny z Tańskich Hoffmanowej – inspiracja czy przeróbka?

As is well know, the long-lasting influence in Poland of Hoffmanowa’s conservative pedagogical treatise « Keepsake of a Good Mother » (1819) was criticized by more progressive Polish women writers of the 19th century, such as Narcyza Żmichowska and Eliza Orzeszkowa. But the unexpected success of that book in other Slav countries later in the 19th century, especially in Bohemia, is less well known. Honorata z Wiśniowskich Zapova (1825-1856), a member of the Galician Polish szlachta who moved to Prague after her marriage in 1841 to the Czech writer K. V. Zap, has been recently exhumed as a Czech writer by Czech and Polish literary criticism: apart from her essays in Czech journals on her native country, much emphasis has been laid on the value of her most important work, Nezabudky, dar nasim pannam (Forget-me-not: A Gift to Our Young Ladies, published in 1859), which was the first book of pedagogy dedicated to the instruction of young women in Bohemia. In her preface to this book, Zapova mentions Hoffmanowa as being one of her many sources of inspiration. Wishing to know more about what exactly Zapova owes to Hoffmanowa, in this article I compare Hoffmanowa’s book of pedagogy with Zapova’s. I am astonished to discover that Zapova’s book is in fact an almost literal translation from Polish to Czech of „Keepsake of a Good Mother” – in other words, that it is a plagiarism of Hoffmanowa’s book. The main question I ask here is : why did no one until now, either in 19th-century criticism or in our contemporary criticism, mention this literary fraud before?

Stanisław Brzozowski’s performative criticism

Stanislaw Brzozowski was active as philosopher and literary critic for only a few years at the turn of the twentieth century, yet his writings are still inspire contemporary thinkers and critics. In every important phase of the development of Polish literary criticism, Polish intellectuals have acknowledged Brzozowski as a writer who had the courage and critical acumen to confront modernity and examine closely contemporary trends of thought from the perspective of social and individual life. This continued presence of the celebrated critic cannot but be interesting for the researcher who is led to ask, what is so intriguing in Brzozowski’s work, why do successive generations of critics and intellectuals return to Brzozowski? Drawing on many important interpretations of Brzozowski’s work (Burek, Glowinski, Nycz), I want to show that in Brzozowski’s work it is possible to find everything contemporary criticism and thought needs, because his books contain, in nuce, projects and strategies which can be (and are) used in different ways by critics representing different ideologies and worldviews. Brzozowski worked out, or rather attempted to work out, ideas which are a source of modern critical projects but in addition his work comprises a repertoire of possibilities which contemporary critical thought can turn to its advantage. Brzozowski’s work can be also treated as a performative act, calling forth the reader’s response, in this way shedding new light on it. I also show that “performative consciousness” is both close to Brzozowski’s practice of writing and deeply rooted in his philosophical conviction. Brzozowski can be considered a representative of modernist, critical literature, in which reading and writing become a mode of experience, a privileged social discourse, and a “leaven,” an act and an activity.

Archiwa literatury kobiecej

The article concerns the relationships between terms, frequent in Polish literary criticism, such as “women’s literature”, “women’s press”, “women’s writing”, “literature written by women” and ”Feminist literature”. The author discusses three research books that have been published recently in which slightly different categories have been applied and which, at the same time, focus on the female element of cultural texts. In addition, the author points at multiple tendencies, frequently dissimilar and distinct, in the approach to the relationship between gender and the text. At the same time the author emphasizes a certain disposition manifested by researchers to employ the gender category to judge literary works. Hence, it seems to be quite justified to reopen the Jy women to show them in a new light. The same applies to the surrounding discussions on relevant titles — just as it is the case with publications by Joanna Krajewska, Jerzy Strzelczyk and Kamilla Łozowska-Marcinkowska.

The B-effect, or: How to do literary criticism with a nuclear power-plant

The B-effect, or: How to do literary criticism with a nuclear power-plant The essay, in the process of making its meta-critical point, reviews the collection Co-memorative essays on Herman Melville's ‘Bartleby the scriverner’ edited by Janusz Semrau (2009). The collection was published almost simultaneously with the new Polish translation of Melville's story, published as a companion volume with Gilles Deleuze's and Giorgio Agamben's pertinent essays (Melville 2009). There follows a wave of interest among Polish critics, which amounts to a new, local Bartleby industry (Czaplińki 2009; Jankowicz 2009; Kapela 2010). This review is inspired by one important example, a lecture delivered on March 24th, at the Department of Polish Studies of Poznań's Adam Mickiewicz University, in which one of the preeminent Polish literary critics presented the ‘melancholic vampire’, the predatory writer, the walking death that lingers, does not want to go, stalks, and sucks out the life of his friends and admirers. Although the speech was primarily about Arthur Miller, Bartleby loomed (stalked) behind, until he surfaced, with a reference to the new Polish translation.

The Polish Formalist School and Russian Formalism by Andrzej Karcz (review)

112 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 200g As might be expected, attention ispaid to the full range of theKharmsian oeuvre:prose stories (mini- and longer), poetry, dramatic works, children's writing, lettersand notebooks. Kharms isdiscussed in relation to such themes (inaddition to the absurd) as: anarchism, arithmetic, art (Duchamp, Malevich, Zal'tsman and others), the body (male and female), dandyism, Detgiz, food, the 'image', the ludic,music, political satire, pseudonyms, religion, rhythmics, semantics and (modes of) transport.Among the figures discussed in compari son with, or in relation to, Kharms, we find: Gogol', Kafka, Meyrink, Sukhovo-Kobylin and Lev Tolstoi ? as well as the obvious OBERIU adher ents and a number of more extraneous minor personalities or groupings (such as 'Nepokoi') of the late avant-garde period in Soviet Russian culture. Keener readers will not fail to notice the underlying (or indeed at times surface) current of dispute persisting within the ranks of oberiutovedenie. There is, perhaps inevitably, a considerable degree of both overlap and unevenness within the contributions taken as a whole, and the volume may be said to incorporate certain editorial infelicitiesand peculiarities. Neverthe less, this ample collection certainly does include a number of valuable and interesting items and it is likely to represent a significant landmark in the now burgeoning field ofOBERIU scholarship. School of Modern Languages ? Russian Neil Cornwell Universityof Bristol Karcz, Andrzej. The Polish Formalist School andRussian Formalism.University of Rochester Press and Jagiellonian University Press, Rochester, NY and Krakow, 2002. 203 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?50.00: $70.00. This book is organized into four chapters, inwhich the author traces the development of Polish Formalism from its 'Anticipations' in chapter one to its integration as a scholarly method in chapter four. Chapters two and three are devoted to investigations of critical approaches employed by the founder of Polish formalism, Kazimierz Woycicki, and the critic Manfred Kridl respectively. Karcz begins with an overview of post-positivist critical effortssuch as those ofMaksymilian Kawczyriski, afterwhich he traces the emergence and devel opment of Polish formalism to the publications by Kazimierz Budzyk and Maria Rzeuszka in the late 1940swhen 'the devastations of thewar and the post-war imposition of communist rule in Poland cut short the existence of the school' (p. 181). From this brief overview it becomes apparent that Russian Formalism plays less of a role than the tide of thebook would suggest. Instead of offering a comparative study of two twentieth-century critical schools in different countries, Karcz's book investigates the shift in Polish literary criticism from positivism and its 'utter subordination [...] to the issues of national identity, social ideology, biographism, and psychology' (p. 21) to the objective, scien tificunderstanding of literary texts thatmarks formalist criticism.The various evolutionary steps that the emerging Polish formalistmethod underwent, bear at times a striking resemblance to the Russian Formalist method, as Karcz REVIEWS 113 points out. However, as his study unfolds, Karcz offers littledetail on the development of formalism inRussia (see below). The book's strongest assets are Karcz's insightfulanalyses of the critical works byWoycicki and Kridl. Without a doubt they constitute a valuable addition to the discussion of the history of Polish criticism in the twentieth century. For example: Karcz introduces the evolution ofWoycicki's critical thoughtwith great care, tracing itfrom itspedagogically motivated beginnings (Woycicki was a school teacher looking for a useable method to relate litera ture to his pupils) to itsmost sophisticated development inworks such as Jednosc stylowa utworu poetyckiego' (1914) or 'Z pogranicza gramatyki i stylistiki' (1922). One would have hoped to read more of Karcz's investigation into the evolution of Polish formalistmethods on itsown terms, along with a deeper analysis of concrete textual examples by the critics he discusses, particularly Woycicki. The profiling of these ideas against the backdrop of Russian Formalism could have been more focused and perhaps even reserved for passages where they are absolutely pertinent: in the discussion ofManfred Kridl's later studies and in chapter four, for example. Instead, Karcz gets somewhat mired, particularly in the Woycicki chapter, in his attempt to demonstrate that the Polish school emerged as an indepen dent evolutionary step inPolish critical thought, rather than under the influ ence of Russian Formalism. This perhaps...

Ujęcie mitotwórcze i demityzujące w polskiej literaturze współczesnej o tematyce żydowskiej

The paper claims that thematic approach has played an essential role in Polish literary criticism for the last fifty years. Although the typological criteria for thematic classification are usually disputed, literary works depicting the tragic experience of the Second World War do not lack the consensus of scholars in this respect. There has been intense debate over Jewish topics as literary controversy has been determined by external factors for the past half-century. Further complications may arise from the manifestation of demythologization and myth-creating tendencies in deheroizing and heroic forms in works on the Second World War. While these facts can be merely used as classifying factors in the case of existential-historical themes, the heroic and myth-creating approach indicates the posterity's negative aesthetic evaluation of works describing life in concentration camps.

Writer’s “Task” and Talent’s Play

In his lectures at the Jagiellonian University in the late 1960s, the eminent Polish literary scholar Kazimierz Wyka used the term horizon of the unachieved. It implied a chronology: a line and a goal which writers try to approach but never can reach. Similarly, the division of the even number twenty by six is never completed. In much the same mechanical manner, this kind of thinking about national literature persisted for a long time in Polish literary criticism. This line of critical thought started with Jan Kochanowski and continued uninterrupted throughout the entire history of Polish literature until the appearance of the poetry of Adam Mickiewicz. The sky was the limit, everything else was below it. This position became the basis of the research method of many critics and historians of literature. Literature was conceptualized as a logical and forward-- moving process, one among the other processes of the national spirit and national history, within which an artist participates in accordance to the context of time and the parameters of his or her talent. A writer may be a genius but nevertheless, he or she is nothing but a producer who expresses that national spirit and evolution of its history. The positivistic stance of many researchers has always looked for the writer's national task. For them the metaphor of the horizon of the unachieved formulated by Wyka was the gap between what was achieved and what had to be achieved. The greatest gift of a critic's mind is the ability to find order in the pulp of the artistic cosmos, and his or her greatest shortcoming is that he or she turns this order into a regularity, a law or, in some cases, into the statute of artistic behavour. This idea of a law or code is what is hidden behind the familiar mythologizing of the past and the programming of the future. One of the aspects of such mythologizing is the substitution of chance by the regularity of law, and as far as programming is concerned it means a multiplication of artistic experience and the wish to predetermine the forms of aesthetic consciousness. It would be the same if we approached historico-literary matter not as a teleological process but as a change of its genres; in such a case our definition would not be easier and the danger of schematism would not be less distinct. A relatively young literature usually does not create its own genres because it starts by imitating existing models. In that sense, it adopts genres by licence or, at best, adapts them to the specific shape of the emerging local art. It may sound strange, but the only Polish author in the past who examined the national literature through the perspective of genres was the preromantic poet Kazimierz Brodzinski. His literary gift can be characterized as pragmatic. He wrote the poem Wiestaw, but he obviously felt that the model was not sufficiently understandable on its own. Thus Brodzinski supplemented his poem with a precedent-setting article On the Classical and the Romantic. In it he identified the idyll as the national genre of Polish literature. He did not mean the Polish imitations of Hesiod and Virgil. The Polish for idyll is sielanka, that is, a song about the village. This does not intend to idealize the village laborer but mythologizes the Polish peasant in general. This has been the case since the Piesn Swietojanska o Sobotce (Song of St. John's Eve) of Jan Kochanowski and the Sielanki of Szymoan Szymonovic. The mixture of national sentiment, Slavic colouring and post-Rousseauan nostalgia for the primitive-which seventy years later produced the movement known as chtopomania--could also be interpreted as a peculiar search for social territory in which to draw comparisons and contrasts with the great literatures. Be it as it may, the genre in this case is a characteristic form of the spirit and not of historically accomplished artistic structure. Naturally, it is naive to seek this kind of understanding in a pre-romantic poet like Brodzinski. …