Romantic Paradigm Research Articles

The Destruction of the Voice

ABSTRACT The musical orality of the lyric voice constitutes one of the most formidable and persistent facets of the ideology of German Romanticism, one that is further bequeathed to the arts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taking the musicality of the voice and the ineffability of “absolute” music as its point of departure, this essay investigates a series of primarily German-Jewish figures—Kafka, Schoenberg, Straub-Huillet, and Celan—who stage a radical confrontation with the political aestheticization of the voice. Premonitions and reverberations of these figures’ vocal “destruction” are further traced in Adorno, Kraus, and Maimonides. At stake is not only a comparative study of the voice at the intersection of various media (music, literature, opera, film, and public performance) but also the kind of majoritarian–minoritarian dynamics (between Yiddish and German, German and Hebrew) that arise internal to a single language and its linguistic politics. German-Jewish cultural poetics ultimately develops as a response to the tensions between nation and empire emergent in the dappled political landscape of Central and Eastern Europe—and amends the dominant Romantic paradigm accordingly.

Zombie jako wyraz traumy. Dehnel i sprawa polska

The article deals with the topic of the zombie figure on the example of Jacek Dehnel’s novel: Ale z naszymi umarłymi. The figure of the zombie is analyzed, its reference to the issue of trauma, as well as the romantic paradigm. In the article, the issue of zombies is primarily related to the necrophilic nature of Polish culture and how the culture of persevering in death was created and initiated by Romanticism. The object of interest is also the contemporary image of Poland and the social diagnosis made by Dehnel.

Przemrażanie historii. "Lód" Jacka Dukaja jako metapowieść historiograficzna

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that Lód by Jacek Dukaj might be interpreted – referring to the methodology of Linda Hutcheon – as a historiographic metanovel. The most important element indicating such a clue is the shift from an allohistorical narration to a story about the nature of history itself. Dukaj treats history as if it were a personal character in his novel. The notable and almost freezing over presence of history in Lód proves that an attempt at this kind of reading enables interpretive endeavours in the context of the entire contemporary historiographic discourse that was initiated by the works of Hutcheon or Hayden White. The traces of postmodernist persiflage allow to look at Dukaj’s novel in a context that is much broader than only word‑building fiction, which is far too often categorized as popular literature. The author of Lód – as I have been trying to show – has turned his work into a treatise about the mechanisms that rule history, posthistory and postmemory, which in the Polish culture seems to be a direct answer to the concept of romantic paradigm, as proposed by Maria Janion.

Night Truck Driver / Kierowca nocnej ciężarówki

Night Truck Driver / Kierowca nocnej ciężarówki

Performing history and cultural memory through ancient drama: the case of contemporary Polish theatre

AbstractBy the mode of representation of human life processes, theatre from its very beginning has contributed to maintaining or confronting a given social order, so as to complete its ethico-political function. One of the genuinely politically involved issues to discuss in theatre has become the past. However, on stage, history is recalled to serve both the present and the future in order to construct and develop cultural memory. Classical reception provides a comprehensive method of coping with the past, empowering the performance of the political. This article ponders the development of the ethico-political function of contemporary theatre in Poland by providing three case studies of productions that perform history and cultural memory in a specifically chosen location: Orestes by Michał Zadara, Ajax. The Machine by Natalia Korczakowska, and Wałęsa at Colonus by Bartosz Szydłowski. The conceptual framework of the analysis is constructed from the idea of the political, adapted to the specificity of the Romantic paradigm that furnishes the ground for the study of performing history and cultural memory in Polish theatre. The issue in focus is to observe how the classical reception of ancient dramas can be a performance of the political through an indirect recalling of the historical past.

Romantyzm — kino — Janion. Omówienie książki Krzysztofa Kopczyńskiego „Paradygmat polskiego romantyzmu w uniwersum filmowym”

The aim of the review article is to discuss Krzysztof Kopczyński’s book The Polish Romantic Paradigm in the Universe of Film. It is the first monograph in film studies grounded in the methodological and interpretative findings of Maria Janion and her interpretation of the paradigm of Polish Romanticism. Kopczyński analyzes Polish cinema through exactly that lens. Part I of the book is an extensive presentation of theoretical and methodological tools related to romantic philosophy and the romantic paradigm used by the scholar, and provides an overview of the state of research. Part II focuses on the relationship between cinema and Romanticism. It also includes a presentation of the state of research in this area, the position of film in Janion’s research and a discussion of Marcin Maron’s monographs Romanticism and Cinema. Part III contains the analysis of works of film whichdeal with the issue of suicide. Kopczyński looks at them through the conceptual triad of melancholy, tragedy and romantic irony.

Podróż do jądra ciemności. Rozważania o apokalipsie w „Czasie Apokalipsy” Francisa Forda Coppoli i „Nie-Boskiej komedii” Zygmunta Krasińskiego

The article offers a comparative analysis of two outstanding texts of culture: Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola and The Undivine Comedy by Zygmunt Krasiński in relation to their multifaceted renditions of the apocalypse motif. The text looks at these works from different perspectives examining their protagonists, settings and forms. The analysis presents a revision of their revolutionary potential within and outside of the romantic paradigm. It also touches upon mechanisms governing apocalypse and inscribes them into film, literary and historical studies.

The individual,kataand the arts: semiotic considerations on cultural identity

AbstractThis article is a semiotics-based attempt to explain artistic creativity of traditional East Asia and the Romantic West. Invoking the Greimas-Tarasti model, in which the modalities of “will,” “must,” “can,” and “know” are considered as a semiotic system, the author tries to examine how these modalities are manifested in discourses that define artistic subjectivities and actions. The concepts of the sublime andyūgen, authenticity andkokoro, formal communicational standards andkata, conventional beauty andhanaare discussed side by side from a comparative perspective. However, the article tries to reveal cultural creative patterns not so much in terms of qualitative difference as in terms of a particular configuration of a universal system. In the subject–object conjunction-oriented metaphysics of Buddhism and Confucianism, the immanent subjectivity is treated as constituted through the body and social mediation. For this reason, as we will see from the analysis ofNōtheater performance principles, individualkokorocan hardly be distinguished from impersonalkata. In the Romantic paradigm, longing for an initial (or final) subject–object conjunction is expressed in the ideal of organic synthesis, and artistic creation is considered as the best manifestation of such synthesis. However, this conjunction functions in most cases as an immanent aesthetic vision, and symbols can hardly become the “complete representation of true spiritual life.”

Christian Sinding’s piano style as a component of European art

Statement of the problem. Christian Sinding is considered “the first after Grieg” at the Norwegian music olympus. He created more than 130 opuses of different genres of music. However, nowadays his works are rarely performed, particularly in Ukraine. Thus, the relevance of the topic of the article is due to the lack of domestic musicology systematic study of Sinding’s piano work as a component of European art. The study of the heritage of the “second star” of Norwegian culture is the overtask of modern musicology – to fill the “white spot” in the study of national piano schools in Western Europe, including Norway, and make the music of this composer recognized and demanded by young performers of the XXI century. The purpose of the article is to represent the individual compositional style of С. Sinding on the basis of his own authorial performance of the analyzed piano pieces. The material for this is the iconic piano works (op. 24, op. 25) of the early and mature periods of creativity, which highlight the style of thinking of the artist. The object of research isthepianostyle of the Norwegian composer Christian Sindingin the prism of European musical culture, the subject – pianominiatures of Sinding. The research methods are based on material that is little known for most of Ukrainian musicians, but belongs to the classical European heritage. Thus, the historical method reveals the dialectic of tradition and innovation in the process of formation of national and individual style in music; genre method – determines the hierarchy of general and specific in the organization of a musical work; stylistic – in addition to the principles of the artist’s thinking indicates the nationally defined features of creativity; performing-interpretive method – reflects the personal feeling of the “sound image” of the piano by the author of the article as the first interpreter of C. Sinding’s music in Ukraine. The results obtained. Generalization of the principles of stylistic thinking of Christian Sinding in the field of his piano work has not received a systematic presentation in existing scientific sources. Therefore, to reveal the relevance of the proposed research topic, we highlight the typical stylistic features and principles of piano work of C. Sinding in terms of its national and stylistic identity. The criterion was the elements of the “national musical language” (according to O. Kozarenko). As for the elements of musical language that affect the sound image of the piano, the work of C. Sinding is characterized by a late romantic paradigm: folklore basis of melody, orchestral richness of piano texture, richness of timbre palette with effects of instrumental sound imitation, complex harmony rhythmic organization, which combines folk dance and instrumental formulas and metric schemes of emphasis (regularity and irregularity). The principles of monotheism and leitmotif are also one of the means of expression of late romanticism as C. Sinding’s worldview paradigm, which certain genre-language tendencies of his piano thinking are concentrated in. Most of the plays have sound effects – imitation of the timbres of folk instruments popular in Norway, including hardingphele, harpsichord, violin. As a result, the levels of stylistic significance of individual elements of the musical language of the artist’s piano works constitute a model of individual compositional style as a reflection of the national mentality of the musical worldview. Prospects for further development of the topic. In the development of the develop edmethodology of analysis of national and musical language C. Sinding will study majorgenres of mature and lateperiods of piano work to sub stantiate the style of thinking of the artist in the paradigms of European culture of Romanticism and modernism of the early twentieth century.

Bitwa pod Mątwami, albo Czy niepamięć jest etnolingwistycznie relewantna?

The notion of “(collective) non-memory” is understood here as facts (events, places, people, etc.) that have been for some reason removed from collective memory or disallowed by a given community to find their way to it. Ethnolinguistics usually deals with (systemic, textual, questionnaire-elicited) positive data, concerning facts, whereas the content on non-memory is not provided directly – it can only be arrived at with the use of special methodology. This kind of research must answer the question why a given community has removed certain facts beyond the boundaries of its memory (or has decided not to allow them in). Four facts from beyond the Polish collective memory are analyzed here: the battle of Mątwy (1666), the Jedwabne pogrom, World War I, and the fate of Polish prisoners in German captivity (WWII). It is concluded that the reason why they have been relegated to the sphere of non-memory results from the pressure of the cultural code based on the Romantic paradigm: the paradigm is centred around the idea of the Polish nation being exceptional, innocent, and inviolable. The code thus prevents that paradigm from being violated or questioned by facts that do not align with it.

Equal Outsiders: Woolf and Coleridge Thinking Community, Romance, and Education in the Face of War

Equal Outsiders:Woolf and Coleridge Thinking Community, Romance, and Education in the Face of War Laura Cernat In a passage from Three Guineas (1938), which rhetorically foreshadows Churchill's famous June 1940 "we shall fight on the beaches" speech, Virginia Woolf prompts women to preserve and expand their ancestresses' habit of thinking critically even while lacking some comforts. Joining the newly-available public sphere, women who had thought "while they stirred the pot" (2001a: 160) are now called to become more articulate: Let us think in offices; in omnibuses; while we are standing in the crowd watching Coronations . . . let us think as we pass the Cenotaph; and in Whitehall; in the gallery of the House of Commons; in the Law Courts; let us think at baptisms and marriages and funerals. Let us never cease from thinking—what is this "civilization" in which we find ourselves? . . . Where . . . is it leading us, the procession of the sons of educated men? (161) These lines echo Blake's "I will not cease from mental fight," which Woolf explicitly cites later in "Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid" (1942: 155). Woolf often interweaves Romantic tropes in her plea against war. Near the end of Three Guineas, for example, she alludes to Coleridge's line from "Kubla Khan," "ancestral voices prophesying war"1 (Coleridge 1954: 298), when she speaks of "some ancestral memory prophesying war" (Woolf 2001a: 218). Such resonances of Romantic affects in Modernism are both frequent and meaningful, as the work of Mary Favret (2010) and Alexandra Harris (2010) shows. While Favret emphasizes the skewed remoteness of war imagery, especially for the British imagination, and Harris sees the Modernists' return to the Romantics as a tradition-embracing homecoming, an "imaginative claiming of England" [End Page 121] (10), they both give less attention to the implications of the Romantic connection for a conception of community that truly goes beyond nationalism. Building on an understudied textual reference, this paper traces some threads that tie Woolf's attitudes towards war to her critical response to Romantic political thought, particularly Coleridge's, as she works to dissociate the representation of women from "romance" (a trivialized inheritance of Romanticism) and recover the societal ideals of Romanticism for the feminist cause. Significantly, Woolf refers to Romantic writers at a crucial point in her argument. After delving into historical and socio-economic issues, after invoking both "the white light of facts" and "the coloured light of biography" (2001a: 143), after imagining the Society of Outsiders, Woolf sounds weary, almost unsure at the end of Three Guineas. Having unveiled the connection between war, capitalist greed, and the oppression of women, having proposed indifference to honors and the refusal of excess as chief solutions, Woolf points to something not yet fully thought out: "we can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods" (241). To indicate the purpose of these new, outsider-specific methods, Woolf falls back on "the great principles of Justice and Equality and Liberty" (241) and, in her very last endnote, cites three sources that might reveal "the views and aims of the outsiders" (293): Romantic writers from different nations—S. T. Coleridge, Walt Whitman, and George Sand. Woolf's use of three examples from the 19th century suggests a renewed reliance on the Romantic paradigm. Although Favret, drawing on Woolf's notes in "The Leaning Tower" about the relatively limited effects of war on novelists such as Austen and Scott, thinks that Woolf underestimated her own remoteness from war and unfairly considered the 19th century "immune" to mass conflict in a way the 20th century was not (Favret 46), Woolf's return to the Romantics and their social models at the end of her pacifist essay suggests that her very conception of the nature of mass conflict has its roots in the 19th century. There is more at stake in Woolf's pointing towards Coleridge as a precursor of the Society of Outsiders than first meets the eye. This neglected reference reveals a deep-seated affinity between the two writers' worldviews, which functions in spite of (or perhaps...

Sposób kreowania postaci Juliusza Słowackiego w przestrzeni internetowej. Rekonesans

The article concerns the ways of creating Juliusz Słowacki’s image online. The problem is discussed based on graphic material (memes, facetiae) and fi lm material (productions in the series“Historia bez cenzury” [History without censorship], “Wielkie konflikty” [Great conflicts]). The authoress briefly discusses the viability of the Romantic paradigm in contemporary Polish cultureand the reminiscence of this presence, which is key in the image of the poet shaped by authors and internet users. Next, the authoress characterises the artist based on the collected research material.
 In most cases, Słowacki is presented as a negative character — a cowardly, pretentious, conceited man, jealous of the poetic talent of his fellow writers. He is often confronted with AdamMickiewicz, a character depicted much more positively.
 Summing up, the authoress considers the reasons for this type of simplification of the image of the Polish bard on the internet, and concludes that it is the result of building a schematic image of the world based on stereotypes; this image then begins to function in the collective memory of society.

Romantyzm polityczny Jarosława Jakubowskiego albo przepisywanie Dziadów (na prawicy)

The article analyses two dramas by Jarosław Jakubowski: Dożynki and Nowy Legion (New legion), which their author designed as attempts at updating the political frame of Mickiewicz’s Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve), (especially ‘Warsaw salon’), read in the context of the ‘Smoleńsk romanticism.’ The right-wing approach to Mickiewicz’s archdrama offers a diagnosis of the social and political divide (‘two Poland’) in the aspect of the clash between two worldviews: left-wing and liberal versus right-wing. Mickiewicz’s authority is supposed to strengthen the right-wing diagnoses, hence it is easy to spot the numerous attempts at instrumental and anachronic reading of the romantic legacy. At the same time, the analysed dramas show the importance and the textual and ideological productivity of the romantic paradigm.

Criticisms of digital art: foundations and theoretical limits

This article attempts a critical examination of the actual digital art production, posing key questions about its artistic value inside the contemporary esthetic discourse, including the relationships with the art system. Considering the properties of the numeric language, two important topics will be discussed: the dialectic artwork-process and the meaning of digital multimedia. With the support of up-to-date computational creativity theories and the evidences of experimental digital art, the treacherous influence of the romantic aesthetic paradigm and the traditional art system will be tested. As a possible solution, the author suggests rethinking the components of software as meta-medium, such as its information assets, its algorithms, the code textual properties, interactivity and interfaces. In the conclusions it will be stressed that the immateriality of software is paramount to avoid misunderstandings and to open new fields of research. For instance, natural computation, ethnomathematics and ethnocomputing are valuable social and educational contents and meanings that could substantially improve digital art.

Поэзия Мари-Лор Груар в типологическом аспекте

The paper aims to reveal typical features of creativity of the French poetess Marie-Laure Grouard (1821-1843). Scientific originality of the study involves a typological description of Grouard’s creative model within the framework of the romantic paradigm. In fact, a typology of the French romanticism has not been developed yet. The findings indicate that Grouard’s poetry belongs to the genre of subjective romantic lyrics based almost exclusively on the author’s personal experience. From the formal viewpoint, the poetess’s creativity can be defined as moderate poetics of spontaneous self-expression, a precursor of impressionistic lyrics of the second half of the XX century.

Epitafia dla romantyzmu polskiego na przełomie lat 80. i 90. XX wieku

The article is about three texts of Polish culture (a 1989 film by Tadeusz Konwicki, A Tale of Adam Mickiewicz’s ‘Forefathers’ Eve, based on Mickiewicz’s poem Dziady, and two novels: Rien ne va plus by Andrzej Bart, 1991 and List of the adulteresses. Travel prose by Jerzy Pilch, 1993) which seem to bid farewell to the long duration of Polish romanticism. The three works concur with Maria Janion’s thesis who heralded, in a democratic and independent Poland after the political changes of 1989, the twilight of the romantic paradigm as it had existed since the first half of the nineteenth century. A more detailed analysis of these cultural texts allows us to grasp the complexity and the ambiguity of the relationships that Konwicki, Bart and Pilch have with the romantic legacy.

Le Christ romantique chez Chateaubriand. Comparaison avec Schleiermacher et Hölderlin

In his early works, L’Essai sur les révolutions (1797) and Le Génie du christianisme (1802), Chateaubriand puts forward two images of Christ that are characteristic of the romantic paradigm of thought: the noble Christ, prevailing over death, a paragon of self-abnegation and of generosity towards humankind and the caring, gentle Christ, remarkable through his morality, sensitivity and beauty, a response to the spiritual needs of post-revolutionary France. Situated in a different socio-political context that provides nuances, Christ being thus interpreted less according to his social usefulness than to his fundamental role in man’s spiritual progress, Schleiermacher and Hölderlin present the image of a Mediator, superior through his unique vision of the sacred (Speeches on Religion - 1799) or of a Conciliator between the finite and the infinite (Christological Hymns 1799-1802); as in Chateaubriand’s case, these images of Christ are illustrative of the romantic dream of reenchantment of the modern world, liberated of dogmatic constraints, looking for an enlarged, good-natured, mysterious sacred.

Wizerunek Rosji w powieści Jana Czyńskiego Cesarzewicz Konstanty i Joanna Grudzińska, czyli Jakubini polscy: problem ewolucji stereotypów romantycznych

The article focuses on the novel by Jan Czyński Cesarzewicz Konstanty i Joanna Grudzińska, czyli Jakubini polscy, analysed in the context of the Romantic cultural stereotypes concerning Polish-Russian relations formed after the November Uprising. While presenting the novel’s plot (the ambivalence surrounding the figure of Grand Duke Constantine, political life in the Kingdom of Poland, the opposition patriots vs. conformists, the operation of secret police services in Warsaw), the author proves that the pamphlet character of the novel (correlated with Czyński’s personal political involvement) makes it an instructive compendium of motifs constituting the image of Russia in Polish literature within the Romantic paradigm.

ОБРАЗНЫЕ ОЛИЦЕТВОРЕНИЯ ЗИМЫ И ВЕСНЫ В ЕВРОПЕЙСКОЙ И РУССКОЙ ПОЭЗИИ... (ОТ АЛКУИНА ДО Ф. И. ТЮТЧЕВА)

В статье рассмотрены наиболее характерные литературные трансформации обрядового мотива состязания Весны и Зимы на материале произведений европейской и русской поэзии и драматургии, включая Словопрение Весны с Зимой Алкуина, песни Совы и Кукушки из комедии У. Шекспира Бесплодные усилия любви, гимн Вальсингама и стихотворение Ф. И. Тютчева Зима недаром злится. Основное внимание уделяется сдвигам в структуре мотива, определяемым поэтикой художественного целого, а также особенностями бытования традиционного фольклорного спора в различных жанровых контекстах. Personi cations of Winter and Spring as contesting seasons being deeply rooted in many peoples consciousness have long literary history during which they have passed many changes under the in uence of cultural, aesthetic, and national language context.In the poetics of Alcuins Con ictus Veris et Hiemis (The Contest of Spring and Winter) the ideology and artistic principles of the Carolingian Renaissance were manifested in combination of folklore Spring call with the dialogical traditions of ancient bucolics and school rhetorical contests. The Winter here is given voice, but the victory of Spring is absolute and eternal, symbolizing the coming of the new Golden Age under the authority of Carolingian Christian empire. In Shakespeares songs of the Cuckoo and the Owl (in Loves Labours Lost) the dialogical principle is weakened, while the whole context is expanded. Instead of celebrating the moment of Springs arrival and Winters defeat the poetic diptych gives two separate pictures of reality as the moments in the year cycle. The winter frost associated with the death of Nature is also the natural teacher who prompts the man to surpass the boundaries of fallen nature. In Russian poetry of the 1830s the lyric principle in depicting personi cations of seasons strengthens against the background of romantic paradigm. In Alexander Pushkins hymn in honour of the Plague (in A Feast in the Time of Plague) Winter being deprived of its traditional opponent plays the part of the weakened substitute for the Plague, which does not eliminate the contrast between them. The new degree of lyricizing is manifested in Fyodor Tyutchevs lyric The Winter not without reason grows wroth (Zima nedarom zlitsya), in which the poet reverts to the picture of the con ict of seasons depicting it through lyrical description. The universal archetypes are refracted through national linguistic world picture making Tyutchevs lyric the model for their perception in Russian cultural domain.

La scrittura di Cettina atoli Ajossa tra passioni tardoromantiche e presentimenti decadenti

The aim of this article is to bring to the attention of the scholars the writings of Cettina Natoli Ajossa (1867-1913), Sicilian noblewoman, who published several novels in which the Romantic paradigm is questioned and the crisis of the Nineteenth-Century world is highlighted. Particularly relevant the autobiographical memoir of Messina earthquake: it focuses upon the bitter conflict between classes, giving us the meaning of the end of an era.