Renesans w Polsce, „Odrodzenie” to złoty wiek kultury polskiej, to czasy króla Zygmunta I Starego, patrona wielu artystów, który zatrudnił architekta Bartolomeo Berrecci z Florencji, do czasu panowania syna, króla Zygmunta Augusta, następnie do czasów króla Stefana Batorego i kanclerza Jana Zamoyskiego. Wówczas Miasto Zamość zostało zaplanowane na prawach i na wzorach włoskich miast handlowych, słynnej renesansowej koncepcji miasta idealnego „città ideale” w określonej sytuacji.

After moving to Italy in 1856, Teofil Lenartowicz, inspired by the great Italian art and supported by the best Florentine artists of the time Giovanni Dupré and Enrico Pazzi, began studying sculpture. Lenartowicz’s sculptures were always connected with literature: his work shows howone influenced the other. It is no accident that his style as a sculptor has been called ‘poetic’ by the critics. The Polish immigrant was fascinated by the Italian Renaissance, and especially by the art of Lorenzo Ghiberti. At the same time, he never forgot about Polish folklore, which played a significant role in his artistic vision. One of the most impressive examples of this intersection of influences is the bas-relief The Holy Workers, complemented by a poem bearing the same name.

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 study is a research reconnaissance into the visual imagery in the poetry of Jan Kochanowski, Poland’s most talented poet before the Romantic Age. Although he was familiar with the technique of ekphrasis and took an interest in emblems, he seems to have been rather sparing in making use of visual potential of the poetic word. However, he does rely on the sense of sight in his epistemological refl ection concerning the problem of knowing God, aesthetics (the experience of beauty) and ethics (the visible order of the world as a guide to proper conduct). The eye also plays a major role in his descriptions of the human psychology, especially love. The sight has a special function in his Treny (Laments), a cycle of elegies written after the death of his baby daughter Urszula in 1579. While addressing the fundamental questions of life and death, Kochanowski draws on visual and aural imagery to convey the devastating pain felt by the father after the death of his beloved child and to question his earlier confi dence in man’s sovereign mind.

The article deals with two issues: (1) the research method of father Georges Florovsky used in his study entitled The Ways of Russian Theology (1937), which is regarded a classic in its genre, and (2) the practice of scientific research conducted with the use of this method. The article is supplemented with Florovsky’s opinions, expressed in letters to his brother Anton, a professor at the Charles University in Prague, concerning the scientific achievements of the authors and scholars whom he met with or whom he came to work with after his departure to the USA (1948). The content of this correspondence has remained hitherto unpublished.