The goal of the article is to propose a different approach to – and therefore a new concept of – the history of thinking. Reflecting on the history of philosophy, it suggests a broader understanding of the latter. Yet traditional studies in the history of philosophy are not to be rejected; they need to be reformed, and such a reform could be performed basing on the experiences of the discipline of historiography. Thus conceived, the history of thinking could open us to a different future.
This article is an attempt to identify the main themes in the literary work of Zygmunt Haupt, a Polish writer, journalist and painter, who emigrated to the United States in the aftermath of World War II. His writings show a keen awareness of the issue of absence/presence and the related problems of memory traits, identity and literary representation. Drawing on the psychoanalytical criticism of Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva and the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, this reading of Haupt’s fi ction, especially his short stories (whose collected edition was published in 2007 under the title The Basque Devil), is a critical reassessment of his work. As a storyteller he excels in the depiction of scenes of terror, desire and the uncanny. The article argues Haupt’s work represents not only a remarkable literary achievement but also offers an interesting study case for critics whose approach is founded on literary theory, psychoanalysis and anthropology.
This article presents a new reading of the spoof poetic manifesto ‘Chamuły poezji’ [‘The Cads of Poetry’] written by Julian Przyboś in 1926. His use of the apocalyptic tones of early modernist poetry to lampoon a trio of acclaimed poets associated with Young Poland (especially Jan Kasprowicz) suggests a complex nature of Przyboś’s rejection and dependence on that movement. In general, the influence of Young Poland, though quite conspicuous in is juvenilia and early publications, tends to fade away. ‘Chamuły’ is a pejorative nonce word which alludes to the Biblical Ham as well as a Polish word for a cad or ill-bred bumpkin. This article adds to it another layer of meaning, based on Derrida’s interpretation of the Apocalypse, with allusions to sexual and genital imagery. And more generally, it reframes the whole Przyboś’s poetic work (not just his early poems) using Catherine Malabou’s concept of plasticity. Seen in a broader historical perspective, Przyboś’s struggles to break with Young Poland are not unlike the predicament of many eighteenth-century writers caught in the dispute between the Moderns and the Ancients, satirized in Swift’s Battle of the Books. The overall conclusion of this study is that at all times the avant-garde and the arrière-garde remain in a continuous dialogue and the innovators never lose sight of those left behind. Poetry is, after all, metamorphic and cannot be contained within within the bounds of manifestoes and artistic programmes.