This paper sketches Miłosz’s (non)-existing book on America which consists of his numerous articles and columns written during his first stay in the United States from 1946 to 1950. They were published in the Polish literary press, often under a pen name (such as “Jan M. Nowak” or “Żagarysta”). The book is a significant record of the period: political transformations at the beginning of the Cold War and Anti-Americanism, popular among the European intellectuals in the late 1940s.
Even if the title of Marta Baron-Milian’s book – Wat Plus VAT. Relationships between Literature and Economy in the works by Aleksander Wat (Wat plus Vat. Związki literatury i ekonomii w twórczości Aleksandra Wata) – implies that the publication offers an overtly original approach to the works by the man responsible for such masterpieces as My Century (Mój wiek), the reader will be quite bitterly disappointed. Undoubtedly, Baron-Milian is well-read as far as authorities of the modern humanities are concerned, and she skilfully operates its glossary of terms. Her interpretations of Wat’s works, however, tend to be questionable and unconvincing in nature, and quite often just arbitrary, since she approaches their historical and literary contexts with an astonishing and hardly acceptable flippancy, subordinating her interpretations to the theses accepted a priori. In her book, Baron-Milian provides a distinct and yet probably unintentional example of rhetoric ‘inflation’ within the modern humanities.
PL
Tytuł książki Marty Baron-Milian Wat plus Vat. Związki literatury i ekonomii w twórczości Aleksandra Wata wprowadza sugestię, że mamy do czynienia z oryginalnym ujęciem utworów autora Mojego wieku, ale czytelnika tej pracy czeka niemiłe rozczarowanie. Autorka, niewątpliwie oczytana w autorytetach współczesnej humanistyki, sprawnie posługuje się jej instrumentarium pojęciowym, natomiast teksty samego Wata interpretuje w sposób dyskusyjny, nieprzekonujący i nierzadko po prostu dowolny, z zadziwiającą i trudną do przyjęcia dezynwolturą traktuje bowiem ich historyczne i historycznoliterackie konteksty, podporządkowując swoje odczytania apriorycznie przyjętym tezom. Baron-Milian daje w swojej książce wyrazisty, choć zapewne mimowolny, przykład retorycznej „inflacji” we współczesnej humanistyce.
The starting point for the remarks on the early oeuvre of Tadeusz Różewicz is the poem “Śmierć podchorążego” (“Death of a Cadet”) published in 1946 in the weekly Odrodzenie, and later included by the author in his famous volume Niepokój (1947) – which, however, was not reprinted later. “Śmierć podchorążego” shows fascination of young Różewicz with avant-garde poetry, especially the poetry of his contemporary master – Julian Przyboś. However, what is finally more interesting, the poem shows also-different than in the poem emblematic for Różewicz’s writings “Ocalony”-the attitude of the young poet to the subject of war. This different attitude is visible in his poetics as well as the interpretation of war experience included in this poem. Although, apart from the differences between “Śmierć podchorążego” and “Ocalony” there are also similarities. In both, Różewicz, as befits a modernist poet, tries to realize the postulate of the search for “new things”, which he formulated in his poetic manifesto published in April 1945.
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