Assessment of photosynthetic activity is one of the quick and simple methods of verification whether the studied environmental factors have a stressful effect on photosynthetically active organisms. High-intensity light can be a stress factor that could have a potential impact on the maximum productivity of photosystem II. The purpose of the conducted research was to observe changes in photosynthetic activity of the lichen Cladonia mitis and the bryophyte Pleurozium schreberi exposed to artificial high-energy lighting under laboratory culture conditions. The obtained results showed variability of photosynthetic activity over time, depending on the amount of light energy supplied. C. mitis and P. schreberi at full exposure (light energy: 52.03 W m ^-2 and photosynthetically active radiation 167.24 μmol m ^-2) showed a slow downward trend in photosynthetic activity, while at half the light intensity periodic fluctuations were observed without changes in the controls. Long-term and high-light intensity exposure of photosynthetically active organisms may cause gradual degradation of the photosynthetic apparatus, which in turn leads to cell death. Low values of photosynthetic activity may indicate a situation in which, due to excess light, the rate of photosystem II damage exceeds the rate of its repair. This leads to irreversible damage to the photosynthetic apparatus.

Salt stress is one of the main factors disturbing the physiology of organisms, including epigeic lichens inhabiting roadsides, due to de-icing salts used in winter seasons. The aim of the research was to study the effect of acute salt stress in various doses on the chlorophyll fluorescence parameters of chlorolichens, i.e., Cladonia furcata, C. mitis, Diposchistes muscorum, and cyanolichens, i.e., Peltigera didactyla, and P. rufescens, which naturally grow inland in the vicinity of roads. We also aimed to study changes in the photosynthetic efficiency of lichens over time and their responses to rainfall simulations in the days following exposure to salt stress to test whether liquid water supply improves photosynthetic efficiency. Salt stress led to a reduction of it in cyanolichens in most experimental groups, while in chlorolichens only treatment with 2.9-3.9M NaCl solutions significantly decreased F_V/F_M. Exposure to acute salt stress significantly affected fluorescence transient curves in all studied species. With respect to chlorolichens, a marked decrease of FM was observed and the flattened shape of the transient curves after treatment with the highest salt doses was the most apparent. Significantly greater disturbances were observed in cyanolichens in which the induction curve lost its sigmoid characteristics after treatment with solutions with a concentration greater than 0.35M. Furthermore, in all lichen species, increased values of ABS/RC and DI ₀/RC and decreases in PI _ABS, ET ₀/RC and TR0/RC as well as quantum yields and efficiencies were observed. Simulated rainfall resulted in a significant increase in the photosynthetic efficiency of chlorolichens to a level corresponding to healthy lichens almost throughout the duration of the whole experiment. On the contrary, in the case of cyanolichens, significant increases in F_V/F_M after water treatment were found only after exposure to low salt doses and, at the latest, 24 h after the stress. Although many cyanobacteria developed adaptations to survive in highly saline environments, cyanobionts present in inland lichen species seem to be highly susceptible to salt stress. We concluded that the time when rainfall occurs after exposure to salt stress is a crucial factor affecting the potential regeneration of PSII efficiency. Regeneration after rainfall is an important aspect for epigeic lichens occurring near roadsides, where, during the winter season, they are exposed to de-icing salt for a long time, and rainfall may partially compensate for their disturbances and increase their photosynthetic efficiency, enhancing the possibility of survival.

Since silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are used as nanofungicides and nanopesticides in agriculture, the toxicity of AgNPs as well as AgNO3 must be determined. Besides this, we evaluated the combined effects of salicylic acid (SA) and nitric oxide (NO) on responses of Phlomis tuberosa plants to Ag-induced stress. The results of growth parameters together with measurement of malondialdehyde (MDA) indicated that exposure to 1000 mg L–1 of AgNPs or AgNO3 exerted more toxicity, which was closely associated with the over– accumulation of ROS and the reduction of photochemical functioning. However, SNP (NO) and SA addition successfully alleviated adverse impact of AgNPs on Phlomis seedlings. Maximum amelioration of Ag-induced stress was found by combined treatments of SA+NO. Phlomis plants primed with SA+NO exhibited higher synthesis of chlorophyll b and carotenoid pigments to ameliorate AgNP-induced adverse effects on chlorophyll fluorescence parameters. SA+NO led to high levels of proline under both AgNPs and AgNO3 treatments. A further increase in antioxidants (phenolic compounds) was observed in NO-primed plants under AgNPs- induced stress, which was attendant with the high level of CAT and APX activities. Increase in total Ag translocation into shoot organs and cell survival were also enhanced by SA+NO under AgNPs stress. We concluded that SA+NO mitigated the inhibitory effects of AgNPs stress on the photosynthetic apparatus by increasing the phenolic compounds and carotenoids as well as by regulating accumulation of Ag, ROS and antioxidants. The present findings provide important knowledge to design strategies that minimize the negative impact of AgNPs and AgNO3 on crops.

This article contains an analysis of a short passage about Don Quixote from Michel Serres’ philosophical dialogue entitled La Légende des Anges. He claims that the generally accepted view of the relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa as a binary, hierarchical pairing is an illusion. In fact, Cervantes deconstructs the familiar opposi-tions of the carer and his subordinate in need of care, the rational thinker and the dreamer, the main character and his associate. As the two protagonists continually ex-change their roles, theirs is a story of creating and upholding new kind of bond. In describing the relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa, Serres alludes to the figure of the parasite (from his 1980 book Le Parasite), i.e. a third party or position, an (invisible) go-between or middle ground that makes the relationship possible but also messes things up. Serres acknowledges the dynamics of this configuration on the formal level and makes it the structural axis of his text, which is just a piece of dialogue between a nurse and an air traffic controller. Their interaction seems to be fully inscribed in the binary model, yet, he insists, there is more to it. This may well be the case with the pair of characters in Cervantes’ novel.

This article examines the appropriation of the pair Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa by Jacek Kaczmarski and Francesco Guccini, two iconic late twentieth-century songwriters (each had more strings to his bow) who were fascinated by Cervantes’ novel. While, traditionally, Don Quixote is seen as the dominant character and Sancho the subordinate one, in Kaczmarski's and Guccini’s songs Sancho is placed on an equal footing the errant knight. This striking revaluation was in a way conditioned by the medium, the twentieth--century art song with its aspirations to be alive to the concerns of the time. For singers and songwriters committed to the cause of social justice, in tune with the prevailing egalitarian, leftist ways of thinking, it was only natural to deconstruct the master/servant nexus at the heart of Cervantes’ novel. However, as the political systems of their home countries differed widely, the social activism pursued by the Polish and that of the Italian author is hardly comparable. While Guccini’s texts resonate with themes of social justice, Kaczmarski builds more bridges to Cervantes (not least in the sphere of poetry) in his song cycle. Despite all their differences, the work of the Polish bard and of the Italian cantautore demonstrates that the mindset and the social realities of the twentieth century mindset made it impossible to bring back Don Quixote without allowing room to Sancho Pansa.

This study is an exploration of formal-aesthetic correspondences between presenta-tion strategies and techniques of transforming traditional literary and musical genre conventions in Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck. It takes as its bottom line William J. Entwistle’s distinction between re-creation and recreation (he used it in his appreciation of Don Quixote and so did Erich Auerbach) and his under-standing of art as an act of reproduction (re-creation) obliged to please (recreation). Seen from that perspective, both Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Berg’s opera “suffer” from ex-cess – overmuchness and surfeit with a tangible residue of melancholy. But it is because of these surpluses that these two works are regarded as masterpieces with continuing universal appeal.

The article is a reappraisal of the work of Tymoteusz Karpowicz, one of the landmarks of the Polish poetic Neo-avant-garde, in terms of the quixotic model (principle). This approach brings into focus the following building blocks of Karpowicz’s autocreative poetics: the private library project, the idea of the book of books, the concept of holistic interconnectedness and the poet’s programmatic detachment (isolationism). In his verse they form sylleptic configurations in which language-games collide with the existential concrete and, in effect, transform the poetry into a performance acted out by the author both in his text and his highly mythicized geographic space. The superposing of his autothematic statements on his autocreative performative actions shows their remark-able congruence, and hence t the incontestable applicability of the quixotic model to describe the nature of Karpowicz’s creative project. In sum, he was a poet bent on finding his own place between the totalizing power of language and the harsh realities beyond the pale of literature.

Józef Szajna – as director and set designer – staged Cervantes’ Don Quixote on three occasions, twice in Poland (i.e. at Teatr Ludowy in Nowa Huta, 1965, and at Teatr Studio in Warszawa, 1976) and once in Spain (Alcalá de Henares, 1993). His creative approach characterized by the blurring of the boundary between the human world and the world of things, or the objectification of human beings and the animation of mere objects, enabled him to lay bare the contradictions at the heart of Cervantes’ novel. In Szajna’s spectacles the circus show and fun fair theatricals interacted with scenes that stirred up memories of war and the Holocaust. Drawing on a broad range of materials including reviews, photos, the text of Lidia Zamkow’s stage adaptation of Cervantes’ novel, the film version of the play Cervantes and Szajna's own statements the article tries to get a grip on the key aspects of his Polish dramatic adaptations of Don Quixote and Cervantes’ biogra-phy and to assess what insights they may contribute to the interpretation of the novel and its central character, the iconic knight-errant.

The goal of this article is to show the interdependence of the reception of Don Quixote and the concept of identity. The argument is founded on the rejection of Don Quixote perceived as an invented character from the world of fiction and treating him instead as a Cartesian subject, in possession of the cogito faculty and defined by the truth. The Cartesian project, though, comes under pressure when the cogito constitutes itself by telling a story about itself. Cartesianism, a philosophy of consciousness, contains an embryo of a new reflection about subjectivity. With the new approach comes a positive reappraisal of the figure of Don Quixote and an acknowledgement of the key role of fiction in the process of becoming human. The liberation of identity from the tyranny of substantialism and the foundation of the subject on action has paved the way for treating the goals of action as originals produced by the subject rather than copies or reproductions.

The problem of freedom features prominently in many great novels, and Don Quixote, as any attentive reader will know, is no exception. Cervantes was deeply concerned with that issue, and, what is also known, he had an abiding interest in Erasmianism, a set of beliefs and attitudes espoused by his tutor Juan López de Hoyos. The Erasmian connect-ion can be traced back not to the writer's biography but also to various points in his work. This article examines Cervantes' handling of the theme of freedom in Don Quixote in such a way that each of the issues can be taken up for further, in-depth analysis. They range from religion and society in Renaissance Spain, the role of women and their pursuit of emancipation, the vogue for transgression of literary norms and conventions, excessive wealth and social inequalities to the Erasmian affirmation of free will. All of these problems are presented here just in outline. Detailed and exhaustive analyses will, hope-fully, follow in the future.

This article argues that humour is a distinct category, applicable to literature, fine art, and even music, and takes up nineteenth-century art as a case in point.

The article opens with a brief history of a genre of literary works that blend both tragic and comic elements, the latter of which seem to have been increasingly more prominent in European culture in general. This article examines various functions of the tragic and comic combination in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, some scenes from Shakespeare’s King Lear, and two modern narrative fictions, where the main character is simultaneously heroic and comic, Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote and Sławomir Mrożek’s short story The Last Hussar.