A translation into Greek and Latin of four poems by Adam Mickiewicz, three from his Lausanne Cycle, composed in 1839–1840, and one slightly earlier (“Gęby za lud krzyczące…”).

How exactly did Adam Zagajewski, the Cracovian exile from postwar Lvov, become the “Poet of 9/11”, as Newsweek hailed him on the tenth anniversary of the infamous terrorist attack? And why has the poem lingered on in the years that follow, comforting readers in the aftermath of all kinds of disasters, private and public, natural and manmade? This essay traces the history behind the poem’s debit in English translation on the final page of the New Yorker magazine’s first issue after the attack. It follows its subsequent afterlife as one of the best-known contemporary poems in the English language, as witnessed by its countless appearances in everything from anthologies to sermons, pop songs, and personal websites in the last eighteen years.

This article takes as its starting point the Greek term μεταξύ, a preposition meaning ‘between’, first turned into a noun in Plato’s Symposium, and in that substantivized form adapted for their own ends by a number of 20th-century philosophers, most notably by Simone Weil. In her Gravity and Grace (French: La Pesanteur et la grâce) she defines le metaxu as in-betweenness, a social and metaphysical category which embraces all that connects and divides (as, for example, a wall that both separates two prisoners and can be used by them to tap messages). In this article Weil’s concept of metaxu is applied to the language and then to various readings of two of Wisława Szymborska’s poems, ‘Funeral’ and ‘Elegiac Calculation’. Pragmalinguistics and semantics, too, play a role in the interpretation of these poems.

In his introduction to the German translation of Norwid's Vade-mecum Hans Robert Jauss calls the work of the Polish poet a lasting challenge to German poetry. This essay attempts to show the ways in which Norwid’s further reception could help re-evaluate German assessments of their own Romantic tradition. For instance, the ironic undermining of the value of work, both creative and physical, in Norwid’s ‘Irony’ can be used as a tell-tale clue for the pursuit of similar intima-tions in the writings of early German Romantics, especially the barely noticed ironic undertones of their representations of labour economics. Furthermore, the adoption of the newly-developed concept of a political and economic Romanticism for the critical study of Norwid leads to the discovery of an unexpected theoretical coherence of his oeuvre, which in effect (let it be made absolutely clear) loses nothing of its heterogeneity and dialogic nature. The irony generated by the habitus of Norwid’s crypto-parabases (a technique which is a distinctive feature of his dramas) reveals the productive role of time in this mode of poetic representation, the time of work and the time of great projects, and conjure up the jeering specter of eternity.

This article focuses on paralogical figures (amphibology, equivocation, hypallage and syllepsis) in the poems of Jan Zych. Paralogicisms are phrases in which the combination of logical and syntactical form produces an irresolvable semantic conundrum. The article is divided into three parts, each dealing with one aspect of Zych’s handling of the opposition of distance and proximity: air metaphors expressive of the channel of poetic speech; communication by post (letters); and images of the labyrinth. The paralogical figures are discussed in terms of their function as textual building-blocks, a mark of the author’s subjectivity, and an invitation for performative reading. In this way, Zych’s poems, in particular Labirynty (The Labyrinths) are reconstituted as literary performances, analogous to the labyrinthine prose of J. L. Borges and Octavio Paz.

The Triumphs (Triumphi) by Petrarch is a series of six poems honouring the allegorical figures of Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time and Eternity, who vanquish each other in turn. The Italian poem sequence was virtually unknown in Poland (although a Polish translation of The Triumph of Love appeared c. 1630, only few readers would have read it as it was circulated exclusively in a small number of hand-made copies). The illustrations, however, caught the eye of the printers and became immediately popular. They depicted each of the victorious figures riding on triumphal chariot, followed by procession of captives. This article examines the Polish verses inspired by the illustrations rather than the text of the Trionfi i.e. written in the course of the late 17th and 18th century.

The author of the most remarkable poetic response to the pictorial representations of Petrarch's Triumphs was Samuil Gavrilovich Piotrowski-Sitnianowicz (aka Symeon of Polotsk). As a student of the Academy of Wilno, he came across an emblem book with copperplate engravings of the Triumphs designed by Maarten van Heemskerck in 1565. His Polish verses (composed c. 1650–1653) follow loosely the Latin epigrams (subscriptiones) by Hadrianus Junius (Adriaen de Jonghe). Symeon of Polotsk was the first Polish-language author whose verses reflected in extenso the pictorial representation of the Triumphs (before him verses inspired by Petrarch's allegories had been written by Mikołaj Rej, Maciej Stryjkowski and Stanisław Witkowski).

Wespazjan Kochowski's volume of miscellaneous pieces in verse published in 1674 includes an epigrammatic poem The Triumph of Love, inspired by Plate One of the Triumphs. However, Kochowski's description suggests that he must have seen an engraving showing Cupid's victims under his feet. That iconographic variant appears, among other, in the woodcuts of Bernard Salomon (1547) and the copperplates designed by one of van Heemskerck's pupils (mid-16th century) or Matthäus Greuter (1596).

The following two poems were written about a century later. In 1779 Franciszek Dionizy Kniaźnin published in his second volume of Erotyki [Erotic poems] a song called The Triumph of Love. Its scenic arrangement, inspired by the illustrations of Petrarch's first Triumphus, is adapted to present twenty-one pairs of suitors. The description is stylized in conformity with the current Rococo manner and spiced up with touches of parody. A similar treatment of this subject can be found in some 17th-century paintings, for example in the Triumph of Love by Frans Francken the Younger, or an identically titled picture by the Italian Baroque artist Mattia Preti. The other poem, On the picture of the 'Triumph of Death', can be found in Franciszek Karpiński's Zabawki wierszem i przykłady obyczajne [Diversions in Verse and Moral Exemplars] published in 1780. It names eleven preeminent ancient conquerors and rulers, all cut down by Death personified by a scythe-wielding skeleton. Karpiński's description was no doubt inspired by a copperplate engraving produced by Silvestro Pomarede and designed about 1748–1750 by Gianantonio Buti after Bonifacio de' Pitati. In each of the two prints most of the figures on the ground round the chariot are identified by name. It may also be noted that Karpiński rounds of his poem with two stanzas evoking the last plate in the cycle, The Triumph of Eternity.