This paper is intended as a contribution to broader considerations and discussions on the still overlooked issues of garrison landscape architecture, its canon – the essence of the place, its identity. Thus far, the issues of garrison space, its attributes – architecture, elements of development and organised greenery – have been beyond the mainstream of scientific deliberations and constituted a peculiar taboo for various reasons and due to specific transition points in history. Being both closed areas and, after the end of their military functions, post-military ones, they are particularly suitable for playing a significant role in urban relations of inner-city areas and their contemporary conservation creations. In the referenced designs and executions, they can provide examples of development directions that take into account their previous military identity – the spirit of the place.

This article is to attempt to explain the concept of subtlety, recommended by Karol Irzykowski, one of Poland’s great minds of the early 20th century, to his fellow literary critics as a supreme guide in their work, including the sorting out of a work's historical and cultural contexts. Irzykowskis ‘subtlety’ is a highly complex concept as it reaches out to the cognitive mechanisms of the brain to throw light on and account for the dynamic relationship of consciousness and unconsciousness in the creative process. Conse-quently, subtlety in that sense is not just another analytical tool of literary criticism. It is more like a sophisticated sensor tracing the interfaces of psychology and aesthetics (the ‘chiaroscuro of criticism’). In criticism, when used to its fullest capacity, subtlety would not only take into account the recipient but also the impact (creative impulse) of the critical text.