Japanese literature has been known in Poland at least since the end of the 19th century, when first translations were made of Japanese prose and poetry (although via English or other languages). I consider the first translation made directly from Japanese into Polish language a short story by Kikuchi Kan, entitled Tusz ('Ink'), published in April of 1939, in a monthly magazine "Echoes from Far East." In the same magazine we can find also many examples of stories and poetry written not by Japanese, but by Polish authors, fascinated with Japan and its culture. Works by the same authors: Maria Juszkiewiczowa, Aleksander Janowski, Antoni Kora, Leon Rygier, Remigjusz Kwiatkowski and others were published also in other newspapers and magazines, and as separate novel books. While some short mentions about the earliest translations may be found in books on Japanese literature and contacts between Poland and Japan, novels, stories and poems written originally by Polish authors inspired by Japan are now all but forgotten. Hardly any of them were published again after World War II and they are not to be found in regular libraries. In the present paper I concentrate on the forgotten jewels of Polish prose (and to some extent poetry and drama) based on Japanese themes, published before World War II.

In 1964, “Pol’sha” magazine published three poems by Wisława Szymborska with a note: “translated by Anna Akhmatova”. As it was to turn out later, Akhmatova had only authored one of the translations, turning the other two poems over to Anatoly Nayman as a means for him to earn some income. The present paper supports this opinion by findings from my analysis of Akhmatova’s archive materials, viz. draft translations of the poems. The drafts of For wine ( Przy winie) reflect three phases in her translation work, while those for Ballad ( Ballada) and The Hungry Camp at Yaslo ( Obóz głodowy pod Jasłem) are only limited to corrections that merely “smooth out” the translator’s poetic style.

This article examines the position of Cervantes' Don Quixote in the intertextual network of Juliusz Słowacki' digressive poems, closely bound up with Schlegel's conception of Romantic irony. The article analyzes in turn direct references to Don Quixote; the use by the Polish poet, often with an ironic twist, of Cervantes' narrative strategies; the influence of Cervantes on the creation of the world of the poems (not least their central characters) and on Słowacki's extensive use of parabasis in all its varieties – from authorial commentaries and addresses to the reader, through characters who step out of their role to speak to the reader, to the foregrounding of the problems involved in the act of reading – to highlight and disrupt the illusion of fictional truth. The analysis shows that the Spanish classic was in many ways Słowacki's literary model and an aesthetic inspiration.

This article examines the analogies, and more specifically the historical 'theatre of the imagination', between Tytus Czyżewski's Robespierre/Rhapsody (1927) and Stanisław Wyspiański's poetic dramas Rhapsodies (Kazimierz the Great and Bolesław the Bold). Each of those poems foregrounds its principal historical character. Wyspiański's dramatic poems, commonly known as Rhapsodies, focus on Kazimierz the Great, Bolesław the Bold, and Piast. kings of pivotal significance in his vision of Poland's historical destiny. Twenty years later Tytus Czyżewski, an acclaimed avant-garde painter and poet, composed a poetic-essayistic salmagundi, in which he sought to render in a similarly elevated style and condensed dialogue the drama of the leaders of the French Revolution, Robespierre and Danton. While Robespierre has to face, apart from some common people, God, the Spirit and Judges that sit in judgment on him, the final section of Rhapsody evokes Juliusz Słowacki. A monologue, mimicking his lofty verse, establishes a metaphorical common thread in Polish history – from the days of mail-clad knights to the wretched everyday life in the trenches – set against a broad background of wars, destruction and the French Revolution. For Czyżewski the French Revolution was a ground-breaking event, the first act of a great historical process that ushered in the Modern Age with its ideas of progress, reason, freedom, social justice, the elimination of poverty. It continues to inspire mankind with the hope that even a most ambitious change is possible. For Wyspiański, on the other hand, the grand project of human emancipation does give rise to doubts whether a wholesale obliteration of the Old is justified and to questions about God, free will, theodicy and destiny, and the 'tyranny of reason'. The differences between the two philosophies of history – Wyspiański's, from the turn of the 19th century, and Czyżewski's, representative of the artistic and intellectual climate of the late 1920s – are no doubt profound, and yet, what both of them seem to share is a deep concern with the relevance of history for the present and for designing the future.

This article is an attempt to re-read Tadeusz Miciński's poem ‘Blood-red Snow’ (‘Krwawy śnieg’, 1914) in the context of a tragedy that took place in February 1914 at Zakopane, or more precisely, in Kościeliska Valley in the Tatras. It was there that Jadwiga Janczewska, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz's fiancée, took her life by shooting himself in the head. Her suicide prompted Miciński, a close friend of Witkiewicz, to write the ‘Blood-red Snow’, a poetic reportage infused with ambiguity, which presents a highly subjective vision of the tragic event and its circumstances. Read out of context, the poem seems be just another product of the poet's fascination with the philosophy of the occult (Luciferianism). However, when its real-life context is restored, the heady symbolism turns out to be a camouflage of a poème à clef, a genre which ‘Blood-red Snow’ actually exemplifies. The poem is an instant reaction to a dramatic event. To make sense of it one does not need to be familiar with the whole story of the relations between Miciński and Witkiewicz. What is perhaps worth noting is that their relationship soured after Jadwiga Janczewska's suicide, which triggered an unending blame game on all sides. While the public held Witkiewicz responsible for the young woman's death, he himself put the blame on Miciński and, first and foremost, on Karol Szymanowski. These controversies are, however, beyond the scope of the 'Blood-red Snow'.