The aim of this article is to pose questions concerning the contemporary situation of children’s literature. The growing significance of books for children in the 21st century should be regarded with optimism. However, the interesting phenomena on the book market do not necessarily directly transfer into positive and long-lasting changes in the reading habits of children and teenagers.
PL
Celem artykułu jest postawienie pytań dotyczących współczesnej sytuacji literatury dziecięcej. Rosnące znaczenie książki dziecięcej w XXI wieku powinno budzić optymizm. Jednak ciekawe zjawiska na rynku książki niekoniecznie przekładają się w sposób bezpośredni na trwałe i pozytywne zmiany w dziedzinie czytelnictwa dzieci i młodzieży.
Any interpretation of one of the most personal poems written by Adam Zagajewski provides a good opportunity to reassess in the new light the elegiac, deeply personal body of his poetry, as well as the role of recollections and memory in the poet’s poetical and essayist writing. The work is interpreted not only within the parental context of the literary output of the author of the essay Lekka przesada [A slight exaggeration] (2011), but also against the background of the important theme in Polish poetry, including modern poetry, i.e. the motif of the mother. The title for the present sketch has been drawn from the essay The Fire of Life, the apology of poetry authored by Richard Rorty, and stresses its unique role in expressing human experience, indicated by the American philosopher.
Essay writing by Bolesław Leśmian, a graduate of law, draws attention not only to the presence of the philosophical or sociological context but also the legal one while his poetry seems to be completely detached from legal practice. The issue of legal protection of values represented by life is depicted in the interpretation of two dissimilar poetic works, namely the ballad Asoka from the volume Łąka (The Meadow) and the poem starting with the words “Przez śnieżycę, co wyjąc powiększa przestworza” from Dziejba leśna (Forest Happenings). Aśoka, a monarch and lawmaker in ancient India, guaranteed it in his addresses. It paths the way to the spiritual for the hero of many legends. In the 20th century the value of human life is guarded by “a representative of law”, uniformed police officer whose very presence in the street prevents robbery. In both cases life is treated by Leśmian as the highest value motivated metaphysically, which opens the way for further reflections concerning the grandeur of law as understood by the poet as well as to the question whether the issue of connections between literature and law, already known from the research into the literary output of Franz Kafka, may help understand Bolesław Leśmian’s outlook on life.
PL
W eseistyce Bolesława Leśmiana, absolwenta studiów prawniczych, zwraca uwagę nie tylko obecność kontekstu filozoficznego czy socjologicznego, ale także prawnego, podczas gdy jego poezja wydaje się całkowicie odległa od zagadnień prawa. W zaproponowanej w artykule interpretacji dwóch niepodobnych utworów poetyckich, ballady Asoka z tomu Łąka i wiersza o incipicie „Przez śnieżycę, co wyjąc powiększa przestworza” z tomu Dziejba leśna, ukazana zostaje kwestia prawnej ochrony wartości, jaką stanowi życie. Władca i prawodawca starożytnych Indii, Aśoka, zagwarantował ją w swoich orędziach. Bohaterowi licznych legend otwiera to drogę do tego, co duchowe. W XX wieku wartości ludzkiego życia strzeże „przedstawiciel prawa”, umundurowany policjant, którego sama obecność na ulicy udaremnia rozbój. W obu przypadkach życie traktowane jest przez Leśmiana jako najwyższa wartość, motywowana metafizycznie, co otwiera drogę do dalszych rozważań dotyczących wzniosłości prawa w rozumieniu poety, a także do pytania, czy zagadnienie związków literatury i prawa, znane z badań nad twórczością Franza Kafki, może pomóc w zrozumieniu światopoglądu Bolesława Leśmiana.
Leśmian’s poems, those that can be treated as parables with the thirdperson narrator and a given plot and those written with the lyrical I and straightforward narrative, include a dominant and premeditated anthropological conception. Leśmian is intrigued by the relation between an individual and other people. The relation is conducive, or even essential, in the spiritual survival of the individual, and is often described as a “salvation”. The relevant issues can be interpreted within the language of the philosophy of dialogue, including the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas, though the latter cannot be obviously treated in terms of decisive influence. The space where the ethical dimension of the interpersonal relations is revealed is namely love towards the closest pesons, it is followed by the encounter with other people, and finally the encounter with radical otherness, with what is, beyond the very experience of humanity, different - with a suffering animal. In Leśmian’s poetical output, in which the ontological and epistemological dimensions are so important, it is rather the ethical dimension that becomes prominent. This dimension, often neglected by researches of the poet’s rich and versified output, quite unexpectedly seems to come down to some absolutely fundamental ethical imperatives: to love and keep in mind that one should not hurt or kill with words or deeds.
This dissertation shows synthetically the Young Poland elegy together with a proposal, due to properties of aesthetics and subject matter of the typology of the genre in this epoch: 1. elegies of the mood connected with the poetics of symbolism, which instead of a personal confession, contain picturesque equivalents of "the condition of soul", 2. autobiographical elegies, among them elegies of memories, 3. stylised elegies, consciously formed according to old genre models. What has been emphasised is the importance of the genre and its unbroken continuity between the 19th and 20th centuries. The most important role was played by the autobiographical elegy in which Leśmian achieved mastery, which aimed from the personal confession to psychological and epistemological discoveries. Staff's role is important as he practised all three kinds of elegy. The wide-ranging phenomenon of elegiacness, occurring also in prose, has been signalled.
The article presents an interpretation of Adam Zagajewski’s poem “The Kingfisher” from the 2014 volume Asymmetry in the context of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s [“As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame”], whose initial words, cited in English, were used as the motto. The article reviews the motif of the kingfisher in poetry and culture. The possible readings of the poem also relate to the symbolism of colours and fire, through which its ontological and metapoetic senses are revealed.
This article aims to encourage new interpretative readings of Stanisław Wyspiański’s play The Wedding. Special emphasis is put on accentuating the role of the wedding ritual as a rite of passage, highlighting the often underappreciated role of female characters inscribed into the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, and underscores the symbolism of the element of air and wind in the play. Finally, the article evokes personal and familial reminiscences of the reception of the play on the theatre stage.
PL
Artykuł stanowi zachętę do odczytywania na nowo Wesela Stanisława Wyspiańskiego. Zawarte w tym szkicu propozycje interpretacyjne akcentują zwłaszcza znaczenie obrzędu wesela jako rytuału przejścia w dramacie, nie dość docenianą rolę postaci kobiecych wpisanych w rytmy życia, śmierci i odradzającego się życia w utworze Wyspiańskiego oraz istotną w dramacie symbolikę powietrza i wiatru. Autorka przywołuje też osobiste i rodzinne wspomnienia związane z odbiorem dzieła Wyspiańskiego w teatrze.
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