Polish Poet Research Articles

Miron Białoszewski, Lech Emfazy Stefański, and the Paranormal: Toward a History of a Peculiar Relationship

ABSTRACT Miron Białoszewski, an acclaimed Polish poet and playwriter, and Lech Emfazy Stefański, a poet, dramatist, director, and since the early 1970s a key parapsychologist in Poland, met first shortly after World War II. They shared a passion for avant-garde theatre, literature, and music, and were also interested in psychic phenomena which, though, manifested itself in their lives and writings with quite different intensities. This article seeks to provide an introduction to the role of the esoteric elements in their biographies, while at the same time situating their relationship against the background of political and cultural changes in communist Poland. The first part of the paper outlines Białoszewski’s and Stefański’s youth experiences and their collaboration in the Theatre at Tarczyńska Street. The second part of the article addresses Stefański’s contribution to the propagation of psychotronics in Poland; it also touches upon his literary texts; while the last section examines the encounters of the former collaborators in the 1970s, placing emphasis on the role of the blind poetess Jadwiga Stańczakowa in bringing the two men back together.

The Digital Edition of Juliusz Słowacki's Eastern Diary : New Possibilities for the Romantic Canon

Abstract: The paper discusses the influence of digital tools on the reception of Romanticism. The study is based on the digital edition of Polish poet Juliusz Słowacki's travel notebook from his journey to the East. The research demonstrates that a full reading of the fragmentary diary requires multidisciplinary work and that digital tools can integrate diverse approaches, showcasing its fragmentary nature. Special attention is given to the specificity of Polish Romanticism and the need for new readings of Romantic works. Digital editions and popularization enable an interdisciplinary view of Romanticism, revealing it as a multidimensional and attractive era for modern readers.

Україна як європейська країна, що потерпає від збройної агресії, в інтерпретації польського поета Гаррі Дуди (на матеріалі двокнижжя«На очах у світу»)

The poetry of renowned Polish poet Harry Duda, known for his deep Christian worldview, journalistic flair, and expansive thinking, has been significantly influenced by the events in Ukraine since 2014. His work, often imbued with elements of voluntarism and militarism, reflects the ongoing struggle of Ukrainians for freedom and statehood. This article examines a two-volume edition of Duda’s lyrical works with the bilingual concept, «Na oczach świata (In the Eyes of the World)», translated into Ukrainian by Viktor Melnyk. This edition conveys the essence of Ukraine’s fight for liberty. In two chapters, the poet contemplates whether individuals are truly protected in modern society amidst threats, political regimes, and hybrid aggression. The book’s title invites readers to consider whether the global community is fulfilling its role in safeguarding democracy and freedom, or if it is ignoring such pleas. Through his rhymed and non-rhymed poems, Harry Duda captures the atmosphere of the Russia-Ukraine war, spanning from 2014 to 2022 and beyond, depicting scenes of wandering, suffering, death, trials, and tribulations. Harry Duda’s portrayal of Ukrainians is informed by the vivid reports of global media, conveying the historical context of their struggle for freedom and pinpointing the perpetrators of war, high mortality, torture, and ecological disasters within Europe. The poet rightly identifies the war initiated by the North-Eastern intervention against Ukraine as a war with Europe and the entire civilized world. This research aims to analyze the character development, figurative and symbolic elements, stylistic expressiveness, and emotional tones in Duda’s poems about 21st-century Ukraine. It addresses the challenges Ukraine faces due to existing geopolitical threats and seeks to uncover the profound artistic meanings and significance of poetry about cataclysms, conflicts, and wars in the context of building a harmonious human civilization.

Виклики перекладу: адекватність чи інтерпретація (на матеріалі українських перекладів поетичних творів Адама Міцкевича)

The article highlights special features in Ukrainian translations of the poetic legacy of the outstanding Polish poet Adam Mitskevich using as examples some of his odes, poems, and lyric verses in aspects of their sense, expressive, lexical and stylistic interpretation, as the role of translations in the process of safekeeping and multiplying the world cultural legacy is especially important. While adhering to national traditions, Ukrainian translators enrich the treasury of Ukrainian literature, enabling the exchange of cultural values between countries and nations. Ukrainian translations of Adam Mitskevich's poetry are researched by multiple linguists and literary experts, in particular, by I. Franko, M. Vaskiv, V. Gumenuk, L. Markuliak, L. Pshcholovska, M. Strikha, and so on. This research is focused on the review of challenges appearing in the process of Adam Mitskevich's poetry translation, both typical and specific, intrinsic solely to the poems of this famous Polish poet. The paper contains an analysis of pieces of Adam Mickiewicz's works translated by Oleksandr Navrotsky, Myhailo Starytsky, and Mykola Lukash. It also defines the effect of Adam Adam Mickiewicz's poetry on different generations of Ukrainian readers. The article also reviews some of the translational methods and peculiarities of their usage by different translators, in particular of author’s style reproduction, symbols usage, outdated words usage and also appropriate usage of dialectal, and special vocabulary in Polish and Ukrainian, etc. The article defines features, ignoring which results in distortion of senses, and measures the level of translator’s creativity, allowed while working with poetical texts. The author concludes that the Ukrainian treasury of the translated poetic legacy of Adam Mitskevich is rich, but would benefit from new translations of poems both already translated and well-known to readers and new ones that have not found their Ukrainian bards yet.

Na spotkanie z nieobecnością. "Tornerai" Justyny Bargielskiej

The purpose of this essay is to analyze and interpret the poem titled „Tornerai” from the debut volume Dating sessions (2003) published by Justyna Bargielska. The choice is due to the assumption that the said work seems to be emblematic of the Polish poet’s oeuvre. On the one hand, it perfectly fits in with the dominant motifs present in her poetry, such as loss, death, trauma, loneliness, or abandonment, on the other hand, it shows fragmentary and oneiric poetic imagery, as well as the author’s characteristic fascination with foreignness, both linguistic and thematic. In addition, as the article attempts to demonstrate, the analyzed poem brings to the fore an autobiographical theme, that of miscarriage, which, also in Bargielska’s later texts, rises even to the status of a driving mechanism of most of her works.

Joseph Conrad in the eyes of Kazimierz Wierzyński: Fearless of the Boundless and Familiar with the Infinite

Kazimierz Wierzyński (1894-1969) is now considered to be one of the greatest modern Polish poets. He was born in Drohobycz (which is now in western Ukraine) and studied literature and philosophy in Cracow and Vienna. During the interwar years he lived in Warsaw, after which for several years (1939-1941) he lived as a wartime refugee before spending more than twenty years in the United States. An émigré for the rest of his life, he finally settled in London, where he died in 1969. Wierzyński’s poetry – like the works of Joseph Conrad – exhibits a particular sensibility to nature (perceived as a living organism) and the outside world, which is full of extraordinary places, objects, people and phenomena that invite us to reflect on the deeper meaning of our existence as human beings. Both writers share a stoic response to adversity and a fidelity to conscience and to the heritage of European culture. In his 1924 sketch entitled “Conrad’s Great Silence,” Wierzyński saw Conrad above all as a writer who yearns for the infinite, whose “maritime reflection is reproduced in his work.” Twelve years later, in a narrative poem entitled Lord Jim (forming part of his 1936 collection entitled Kurhany), Wierzyński brought the eponymous character of Conrad’s novel into the pantheon of the Polish collective imagination. The fate of Lord Jim, who is tormented by nostalgia for his native England (to which he cannot return) would seem to foreshadow that of the émigré poet whom Wierzyński himself was soon to become. In the titular poem of Wierzyński’s wartime collection Róża wiatrów (The Wind Rose – 1942), Conrad appears as a “role model” for all Polish wartime refugees and émigrés, who, like castaways, search for their own guiding light “in the Conradian sky” – a light that could help them find a safe haven where they could live and work in their own artistic realm without the need to care about literary fashions. This poem has been translated into English (under the title The Compass Rose) by Mary Phelps (Kazimierz Wierzyński, Selected Poems, New York: Voyages Press, 1959). In the opinion of the author of the present article, this translation fails to correctly convey certain key images and allusions which enrich the meaning of the poem and which connect it with the poet’s own personal situation as an émigré writer.

Metaphysical Horizon in Wanda Dynowska's Indian Poems

The article concerns the works of literature published by the Polish poet Wanda Dynowska (1888-1971). The sacred theme, which is ubiquitous in her works, will be analysed and interpreted. As a writer, translator, social activist and promoter of Indian culture in Poland and Polish culture in India and Tibet, Dynowska was an extraordinary woman. She does not belong to the group of the most outstanding Polish poets such as Wisława Szymborska, Czesław Miłosz or Zbigniew Herbert, yet her poetry is definitely unique due to the subject matter that is hardly found in Polish literature and the empirical sources of her work. What is more, Dynowska came to India in 1935. The experience of living in Hindu culture had a tremendous impact on her poems. Therefore, her poems and essays were published thanks to Dynowska’s infatuation with Hindu culture, the writings of Krishnamurti and the spiritualism of Hinduism and Buddhism. The following works Mahayana Buddhism, On the subject of nature and art, Hindu poems were published thanks to the enterprise, which was funded by Wanda Dynowska and Maurycy Frydman. Indeed, they owed it to a Polish-Indian Library that was located in Madras. Surprisingly, only a few scholars such as Kazimierz Tokarski, Izabela Trzcińska and Ewa Dębicka-Borek scrutinised Dynowska’s poetry at that time. In this article the poems titled Where are you?, My path, Shiva's Night, Near and far are interpreted. Furthermore, the philosophy proclaimed by Mircea Eliade, Gerardus van der Leeuw and Rudolf Otto is intertwined with a novel analysis of the poems. In addition, Polish sacrologists such as Stefan Sawicki and Zofia Zarębianka had a major impact on interpreting Dynowska’s poetry. Consequently, the interpretation of the works shows that the sacred in the works of Wanda Dynowska is based on respect for the followers of each religion combining Christian, Buddhist and Hindu influences.

The Warsaw Ghetto Poet—Zionist? Revisionist? ŻZW Member? On the Ideological Context and National Outlook of Władysław Szlengel

Abstract This article discusses the cultural and ideological representation of the Jewish Polish poet Władysław Szlengel in historical and historiographic research. The author maintains that while many researchers have described Szlengel as universal, cosmopolitan, sympathetic to assimilation, with socialist leanings, or, at least, apolitical or indifferent toward the national issue, the “Warsaw Ghetto poet” in fact had firm Zionist-Revisionist leanings before the war, and was connected to the Betar-founded1 Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ŻZW) underground during the war and Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Thus, the author presents evidence and quotations previously unexplored in the field, which shed new light on the life and works of Szlengel.

Norwid in studies by Rolf Fieguth

This article aims discusses Rolf Fieguth’s studies of works by Norwid, focusing primarily on the German Slavist’s interpretations of the cycle Vade-mecum and the long poem Quidam. The first work reconstructed here, along with its assumptions and conclusions, is Fieguth’s 1985 study on “poetry in a critical phase”and the second is the 2005 essay on the comparative contexts of Norwid’s famous cycle (the latter was published in Polish in 2011). A lot of room is devoted in this section to Fieguth’s analysis of distortions introduced by Norwid at various levels of the poem’s organization. These remarks are complemented with an account of Fieguth’s comparatist conceptof “cultural confrontation,” which goes beyond dualistic accounts of literary creativity, revealing the invariably broad, European context of meetings between poets and texts, facilitated by the process of national cultures permeating each other. The second part of the article is devoted to Fieguth’s 2014 book Zaproszenie do „Quidama”. Portret poematu Cypriana Norwida [An invitation to Quidam. A portrait of Cyprian Norwid’s long poem]. Reflections on this publication concern not only its detailed findings about Norwid’s long poem but also the critic’s methodological assumptions, which have helped him to update the long-standing genre in the history of literature, namely the “author and his particular work” type of monograph. Among the issues addressed in the book, the article discusses, in particular, the difficulties accompanying interpretations of Quidamand the question of Norwid’s classicism. The third part of the article draws attention to Fieguth’s remarks onNorwid made in recent years (2017, 2018, 2020). The article thus summarizes Rolf Fieguth’s thirty years of research on the most important poetic achievements of the Polish poet.

An Export Commodity

On the cultural diplomacy of Polish poet Wisława Szymborska.

„Literatūros lankai“: dialogas su lenkų poetais

The article explores the translations of Polish literary publications in the Lithuanian Exile Literature Magazine Literaturos Lankai (Literary Folios, during the period 1952–1959). Like many of its contemporaries, Literaturos Lankai expanded the scope of foreign literature in its pages through translations. The staff of the magazine continued the Lithuanian tradition by presenting Polish poets related to Lithuania: Czesław Milosz (1911–2004) and Julian Tuwim (1894–1953). New readers were introduced to the poetry of the Polish exile Jerzy Pietrkewicz (Peterkiewicz) (1916–2007) whose writings so far have been almost not translated into Lithuanian. In exile, translator Juozas Kėkštas (1915–1981) played a pivotal role in disseminating of Milosz’s highlighting his multifaceted talents as a poet, prose writer, and literary critic. Milosz offers to break out of the feelings and impressions in Chalk Circle poetry, seeking a language that reflects epic consciousness and new forms of expression. The works of Polish authors published in Literatūros Lankai reflect the ‘pulse of the time’, revealing a disturbed lyrical subject and an ongoing quest for new artistic forms. The translations of Polish literature strengthened the literary and cultural connections between Lithuania and Poland.

“MORE IS LESS” – POLISH POETRY AND THE ECOLOGICAL MELTDOWN

The present essay deals with the subject of ecological reflection undertaken by 20th-century Polish poets: Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Czesław Miłosz, Tadeusz Różewicz and Zbigniew Herbert. The key to reading and interpreting their poems is adopted from Jason Hickel’s book "Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World". In the conclusion, a community of thought is discovered in regard to the ecological meltdown that today’s world is experiencing.

Polonica Toneta Pretnarja

The article presents a portrait of Tone Pretnar, a Slovene Slavic and Polish philologist, primarily discussing his works in the field of Polish studies. Pretnar worked at universities in Ljubljana, Graz, Warsaw, Krakow and Katowice. His works consist of scholarly studies, literary and cultural commentaries, numerous translations and original poetry. His research focuses mostly on the comparative Slavic theory of verse and metre in translation, while his second area of interest was Polish-Slovene literary relations and their history. Pretnar was the greatest Polish literary translator of his generation in Slovenia, having translated over 100 Polish poets and almost 12,200 lines of poetry. With Bożena Ostromęcka-Frączak, he published the first ever Slovene-Polish dictionary (Ljubljana 1996). In light of his achievements, his name was included in the “Słownik badaczy literatury polskiej” (“The Dictionary of Polish Literature Researchers”; ed. J. Starnawski, vol. IV, Łódź 2001).

Das endgültige Öffnen einer schweren Türe

This review is dedicated to the ten-volume edition of the Dzieła zebrane [Collected Works] of Tymoteusz Karpowicz, a significant Polish poet, playwright, literary and cultural scholar. It emphasises the scope and high quality of the editorial work carried out by Jan Stolarczyk in collaboration with Joanna Roszak. The text also synthetically discusses the content of the subsequent volumes published between 2011 and 2023, with a particular focus on the tenth volume Eseje, poezja, publicystyka, wywiady [Essays, Poetry, Journalism, Interviews], which concludes the complete edition.

Translating Parody as a Domain of Experiment? Two Polish Poets and an Invitation to Play the Game

The author explores the possibilities of parody translation, based on a 1933 Polish literary example. Poet Julian Tuwim imitates with a vengeance the highly idiosyncratic diction of Bolesław Leśmian, including the latter’s signature trait, neologisms, while styling the piece as a supposed rewriting of a familiar children’s rhyme (folk song) about a kitten. This second hypotext is diagnosed as ancillary and it is argued that a translation of the ‘X as would have been written by Y’ parody should harness a replacement of X which will be functional for the target culture. As an experiment, possible substitutes are suggested for two cultures: Russian and Anglo-Saxon, corresponding to the languages into which Leśmian, the parodied poet, has been most extensively rendered. The author discusses factors conditioning the translatability of parody, including reception in the target context. The analysis concludes with a call for translations. Two such responses to the challenge are appended.

Classicist, the Romantic and an Uncertain Eternity

In the second half of the 20th century, the Young Wave of Polish poets (the avant-garde poets born in the mid-1940s) clashed with Zbigniew Herbert (a member of the wartime generation, born around 1920) over generational differences. This dispute revolved around poetics (“plain speech” versus “classicism”) and subject matter: whether poets should deal with “contemporary times” meaning current events, especially focusing on politics, or whether they should rather invoke topoi of Mediterranean culture in order to view current events in the context of the permanent values of European culture. For Herbert, this was also a question of the writing strategy, as he felt that topicality should not dominate the interpretation of the poem and that poetry should survive past communism. Adam Zagajewski was chosen as a representative of the New Wave because his early clash with Herbert propelled him to the position of an adversary. Sadly, both Harbert and Zagajewski failed in their attempt at an exegi monumentum, as the educa- tion system of today has abandoned the classical tradition and many allusions to it are simply incomprehensible to today’s high school or even college graduates. Knowledge of recent history is not in demand either. Both poetics are unintelligible to a wider audience and in this sense they have failed.

Polskie kresy – bliskie i dalekie (1918-1939)

: The subject of Borderlands situated further away and close by is presented not by accident. In the Polish historical narrative, we usually remember only about the Eastern Borderlands. Created by Henryk Sienkiewicz’s “Trilog”, known from the pages of Polish history, being a place of birth to Polish poets, they are inevitably memorable and integral part of Poland’s national tradition. This notion is so strong that the word ‘Borderlands’ is associated only with the formed eastern territories of Poland. We do not use this terminology for other areas. We think only of the eastern borderlands which were gradually lost between the 17th and 20th century. This article also mentions this fact. Nevertheless, the article presents a slightly different perspective, i.e. it tries to present the Borderlands that were distant because they were unknown or known very little, the Borderlands which did not manage to enter the Polish narratives and Polish historical memory for good. They entered Poland for a very short time and disappeared for it very quickly. Nowadays they are abroad and they are practically unknown. The distant, unknown former Polish western Borderlands was Trans-Olza (Zaolzie). The Silesian residents living there in the 19th century shaped mostly Polish national identity, i.e. at the time when the then modern European nations were establishing. Undoubtedly, this was influenced by a strong economic development of the territory of Cieszyn Silesia. On the one hand, it was a blessing, but on the other hand, it turned out to be its curse, causing the rivalry over this land between the Poles and Czechs. The conflict over this territory, where the ethnic issues played no significant role for the powers considering this matter. Moreover, it inscribed into different types of territorial conflicts that Europe experienced after the First World War. For the borders established by the victorious allied forces as part of the Versailles treaty were not entirely fair in any place, which, in turn, is an obvious matter because it is never possible to set borders that would fully satisfy all the parties of the conflict. This was also the case of the Polish-Czech conflict over Cieszyn Silesia. The rivalry did not cease with the borders being established by the allied forces in July 1920, and both countries were still interested in the population living there. The population faced assimilative activities as the so-called ‘Polonized Moravians’ by the Czechoslovakian Republic. On the other hand, this population became a causation for Poland when reclaiming this area in autumn 1938. In the second part of the article presents the realities of life in Trans-Olza in the second half of the 1930s, which were witnessed by Paweł Hulka-Laskowski. He collected material for his monumental work on Trans-Olza Silesia. This work is practically unknown today, but it is an equivalent of the results of Melchior Wańkowicz’s travels around East Prussia in the book Na tropach Smętka. Who has ever heard in Poland of the work by Paweł Hulka-Laskowski Śląsk za Olzą Similarly, who has the knowledge of the long-forgotten Western Borderlands? This article introduces readers to this subject matter.

Agnieszka Osiecka’s Diaries and Notes as a Source for Research into the History of Girlhood

This review article refers to the publication of six volumes of personal notes by Agnieszka Osiecka (1936–1997), one of the most popular Polish poets, a songwriter, director, and journalist of the second half of the twentieth century. The collection under review covers mainly the 1950s and provides a space for the search for one’s own identity. While referring to the recent edition and highlighting selected themes, this review article puts forward a perspective on the entire body of documents published between 2013 and 2021. A particular emphasis is placed on the importance of analysis of such egodocuments in girlhood studies.

The Cloud Over the Highway. On the Inescapability of Mystical Experience

Adam Zagajewski’s essays on poets and poetry are interpreted here in the context of scholarly debates about the specificities of mystical experience. From the four criteria the great American philosopher and psychologist William James developed in 1902, “transiency” and “passivity” can be brought together as indicators of what I call the inescapability of mystical experience, while the two other criteria, namely “ineffability” and “noetic quality”, can be treated as what I call the “paradox of articulation”. The essay demonstrates how profound the reflections of the Polish poet on these questions are, how they are related to his views about the possibilities of contemplation and art in view of the history of violence of the 20th century and what they mean for the future of religion. The highly influential narrative of a world-historical process of ongoing “disenchantment” (Max Weber) loses much of its persuasiveness if these reflections are true.

O naukowej pasji i wrażliwości poetyckiej. Wokół działalności naukowo-badawczej i twórczości lirycznej Haliny Twaranowicz

The article describes nearly forty years of professional work, and the academic and literary career of one of the most prominent Belarusian and Polish poets, a long-time researcher at the Janka Kupala Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and the Department of Belarusian Philology of the Institute of East Slavonic Philology of the University of Bialystok – Halina Twaranowicz, Ph.D., professor of UwB. The text describes her significant research achievements, publications, and editorial output. Also presented is a discussion of her organizational activities as Head of the Department of Belarusian Philology at UwB, which, also with her significant contribution, has become a vital center of Belarusian literary studies. One of the most important centers of Polish Belarusian studies next to the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. The final part of the article contains reflections on the specificity of Halina Twaranowicz’s lyrical works.