Starting from the centrality of poetry in Antonio Tabucchi's oeuvre, this article builds upon previous interpretations of selected short stories and essays by examining the role played within them by the poetry of Wis & lstrok;awa Szymborska. Sharing with Szymborska an inclination toward combining the high and the low in literary discourse, as well as a pluralism of perspectives and a simultaneous skepticism and faith in the power of literature and art as key ideological-epistemological foundations, Tabucchi establishes multiple forms of dialogue with Szymborska's texts. He cites them directly in essays or narratives, or alludes to them indirectly. Verses from the poem Tortures are interwoven with lines by other poets in the prose-poetic palimpsest Story of the Man of Paper (Racconto dell'uomo di carta) from the collection Stories with Pictures, where they constitute an essential structural element of a parable on political violence and on the testimonial function of art. Tabucchi also thematizes the figure and work of the Polish author in his intertextual and intermedial collages. Thus, in the mosaic-like macro-narrative The Heirs Give Thanks (Gli eredi ringraziano), Wis & lstrok;awa Szymborska is one of three women artists-alongside the painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and the poet Sophia de Mello Breyner-whom Tabucchi links as exemplars of the principle of "fluidity," that is, the capacity of one art form to be translated into the language of another. In the story The Circle (Il cerchio), the opening lines of the poem The Old Professor serve to accentuate the sociocultural features of one of the two semiospheres juxtaposed in the narrative, while the final stanza-although not cited in the text, but instead activated through the reader's intertextual competence-contributes to the construction of meanings associated, in the present interpretation, with a pluralistic conception of fluid and free identity.
The article examines the "psychopoetics" of Vladimir Sorokin's novels The Day of the Oprichnik (2006) and The Sugar Kremlin (2008). Although nominally set in the year 2028, their narratives overlap temporally and symbolically with the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century. Distinguishing among emotions, feelings, and passions, the author argues that in literature such psychic phenomena constitute part of the artistic material-no less essential to the fictional world than linguistic or extralinguistic elements. A central category in Sorokin's works under consideration is the "sense of statehood," a construct that encompasses hierarchy (with the Master positioned at the apex of the value-emotional pyramid), love, loyalty, reverence, the brotherhood of the oprichniki, and ritualized obedience. Pride and patriotic fervor become concentrated in the symbolic aura of the Kremlin. While predominantly grotesque and satirical, these novels are not reducible to satire; beneath their corrosive irony lies an unmistakable concern for the future of the country-and, by extension, the world. Emotions in these texts display an ambivalent, often paradoxical nature: love blends with hatred, admiration with fear. They operate both at the individual (personal) and collective (mass, popular) levels, and manifest themselves physiologically. Notably, emotions exert comparable effects in real life and in "parareality," a state shaped by dreams or drugs. In conclusion, while Sorokin subjects History, Religion, and the State to radical critique, he leaves language (Russian) and feeling (also Russian) effectively unquestioned. His novels offer an X-ray-like image of the "Russian soul," simultaneously inheriting and critically reinterpreting the Russian literary tradition.
The article examines the representations of evil in two of Joanna Bator's most acclaimed novels, Sandy Mountain (Piaskowa G & oacute;ra) and Dark, Almost Night (Ciemno, prawie noc). The latter, despite its significant recognition in Poland and multiple literary awards, has yet to be translated into Croatian. Drawing on philosophical, theoretical, and analytical approaches that conceptualize evil in non-transcendental terms-that is, as an intrinsically human phenomenon-the analysis considers the problem of evil from both a universal human standpoint and a specifically Polish cultural and historical perspective. Within the first framework, the article investigates common motivations for committing acts of evil, including individual traumas rooted in domestic abuse, the pursuit of material gain, and the desire for power. The second perspective foregrounds the ways in which the consequences of collective traumas-particularly those stemming from the Second World War and the subsequent post-war forced migrations and displacements-intersect with ideologized messianic narratives and radicalized religious practices. In a politically and socially charged environment, these forces can be mobilized into a catalyst for violent action, a form of brutality that contemporary Polish society, influenced by competing ideological currents, does not entirely repudiate. A dedicated section addresses violence directed toward others and toward those perceived as different, tracing the continuum between verbal aggression in digital spaces and physical violence in the material world. The concluding section underscores that evil does not manifest as demonic or metaphysical, but rather assumes an ordinary, everyday human form, thereby affirming its banality (Arendt). Throughout the article, the central thesis derived from the novels remains consistent: evil generates further evil, violence reproduces violence, and breaking free from this vicious cycle appears less feasible at the collective level than through concrete individual acts.
The works of numerous Austrian authors of the immediate post-imperial period-including those most renowned-frequently take as their thematic point of reference the recently collapsed Habsburg Monarchy, a state formation that some of them, Karl Kraus for example, encode negatively, while many others, such as Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig, recall with wistfulness, regarding its disappearance as a profound loss. Robert Musil, however-whose principal work The Man Without Qualities, itself one of the central achievements of classical modernism, is firmly anchored in the Austro-Hungarian world-aligns with neither of these two positions. Although a sharp critic of the ideological distortions characteristic of Habsburg society and culture, Musil's perspective on the old Central European empire is marked by a benevolent irony, a quality most clearly expressed in the name he devised for it: "Kakania". This authorial neologism, long established as a synonym for the k.u.k. monarchy, most vividly reveals the ambivalence of Musil's attitude toward Austria-Hungary, an ambivalence the narrator elaborates at length in the eighth chapter of The Man Without Qualities. Taking this indisputably central segment of the novel as its point of departure, the present article, following several introductory remarks, examines the various semantic dimensions of Musil's concept of Kakania.
Great works of world literature become accessible to global readerships primarily through the work of translators. This is also the case with Bruno Schulz's The Cinnamon Shops, which entered the Croatian literary sphere through Dalibor Bla & zcaron;ina's translation. The oeuvre of this canonical Polish writer is distinguished not only by its thematic singularity but also by its extraordinary linguistic richness. Schulz's stylistic idiosyncrasies-such as his extended, highly elaborated sentences, dense metaphorical networks, and the proliferation of cultural motifs-render his literary universe particularly distinctive, a quality especially evident in The Cinnamon Shops. This study examines the Croatian translation of Schulz's collection with a focus on the translator's strategies and solutions at the morphosyntactic, lexical, and phraseological levels. By analysing these dimensions, the paper seeks to illuminate the challenges posed by Schulz's poetic language and the ways in which they are negotiated in the target text.
