In this paper a semi-structural econometric model is implemented in order to estimate the natural rates of interest in two large economies of the Euro Area: Germany an Italy. The estimates suggest that after the financial crisis of 2007–2008 a decrease of the growth rate of potential output and the corresponding natural rate of interest was greater in Italy than in Germany which could have had important implications for the effectiveness of a common monetary policy. Unlike in other studies, it is found that the monetary policy stance was less expansionary in Italy as compared to Germany for the whole after-crisis period.

The aim of this article is to show how Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer depicts the creative process in his autothematic poems. The readings draw on the interpretative strategies of the theory of affect (primarily the work Ernst van Alphen, Teresa Brennan and Brian Massumi) and somatic criticism (e.g. Anna Łebkowska’s somatopoetics, Marta Smo-lińska’s ‘augmented haptics’). In the great majority of Przerwa-Tetmajer’s poems dealing with the process of poetic creation, we are told that it is triggered by an explosion of the affects or an overpowering divine inspiration, bordering on madness. The article ana-lyzes in turn the affective nature of the creative process and the affective perception of a work of art; the image of the artist as craftsman; and, finally, the image of the phantas-matic woman, a product of the act of creation.