The article discusses Joanna Gromek-illg's biography of Wis & lstrok;awa Szymborska entitled Szymborska. Znaki szczeg & oacute;lne. Biografia wewn & eogon;trzna (Szymborska. Distinguishing Marks. An Internal Biography). The reviewer situates the book in the contexts of biographical writing and methodological transformations in contemporary humanities. She also pays attention to the hermeneutical dimension of Szymborska's latest biography as to both epistemological and ethical project.
The subject of the paper is a set of various forms of avant-garde collectivity and cooperation in the work of Anatol Stern. Displaying the key contradiction between the collective and the individual tendencies within the avant-garde appears to be an important aspect of the proposed depiction. Baron-Milian analyses the collective creative practices and forms of Stern's cooperation in the 1920s and later, pointing at those among them he was involved, inter alia, with Aleksander Wat, Bruno Jasie & nacute;ski, Mieczys & lstrok;aw Szczuka, Henryk Berlewi, Stefan Kordian Gacki, Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, or Alicja Stern. The article aims to capture the distinctness and diversity practices of collective creativity shown in the perspective of theories of avant-garde group, collectivity and cooperation which were formulated both by avant-garde theoreticians and historians, as well as by artists. Additionally, the author of the paper proposes some possible future directions for research in avant-garde collectivity.
The review is a discussion of Rozalia Wojkiewicz's book W spektrum Wyspia & nacute;skiego. Witra & zdot; w poezji M & lstrok;odej Polski (In Wyspia & nacute;ski's Spectrum. Stained-Glass Window in the Poetry of Young Poland, 2022). The monograph has been recognised as the most vital literary-historical achievement published in recent years. The researcher explores the subject that has to this day occupied the margins of studies in the poetry of the turn of the century, and she situates it in the context of Stanis & lstrok;aw Wyspia & nacute;ski's letters and numerous examples of Young Poland's pieces that take up the subject of stained-glass window motif.
Zbigniew Herbert inferred the auctorial style of reading his poems out loud from the philosophical-elegiac tone of his debut volume Struna & sacute;wiat & lstrok;a (String of Light), the proofs of which are in the poet's radio recitations from the 1960s and 1970s as well as from public performances during evenings with the author from the 1980s. The recorded pieces sound as a Stoic's substantive lecture about the rule of the world and at the same time a testimony of ethical obligation pronounced over a friend's coffin. In 1998, at the last recording session, Herbert changed the recitation style of his lyrical pieces into a more personal, strengthening their catastrophic dimension on the one hand, and psychological-lyrical on the other hand. Scriptoral reading of the recorded poems allows to discern the difference in style and to interpret it within the affective mode-an unusual encounter with a transformed poet.
Juchniewicz in his paper traces the Shoah theme in Adam Zagajewski's work, when analysing the poet's selected verse and essayistic texts published from the 1980s. The study consists of several parts: the first contains Zagajewski's poetry reception, while the remaining ones reveal his interest in the Holocaust. When opinions about the poetry's affirmativity and Zagajewski's tendency towards aesthetisation are confronted with poems of interventional and critical character, certain statements of the author remain unnoticed. Giving those statements, Zagajewski takes up the role of not only the poet who speaks in the name of the absent/murdered, but also as a representative of the postmemory generation. This aspect proves vital in searching for the formulas and modes to approach the past through the medium of imagination as a superior category that allows to translocate between temporal planes and to sympathise with the various groups of victims.
