Kto i co buduje podmiotowość Polskiej Akademii Nauk? Są to ludzie, instytucje i ideały.

Although the Russian Orthodox Church participates in the activities of the ecumenical movement, it remains sceptical about the evolution of Western Christianity, mainly Protestantism. In particular, attempts to challenge traditional dogmatic and ethical formulations are unacceptable. The Russian Orthodox criticism goes even further when it reveals the sources of the rejection of church tradition in early Protestant theology. In this context, the article presents the main elements of the contemporary Russian Orthodox critique of the Reformation’s rejection of tradition as an authoritative source of Christian faith. The first part outlines the theological and ideological specificity of the Russian Orthodox discourse on the Reformation. The second part presents the Orthodox concept of the authority of tradition in the Church as a starting point for the criticism of the Reformation. The third part discusses the main elements of the criticism of the reformatory concept of sola Scriptura with particular emphasis on its socio-political reasons and consequences.

Conservation of the Old Town Zamość began to realize almost a hundred years ago. Then the eminent preachers of culture in the early period. 20.year inter-made idea of restoring the prestige of the works of Polish culture. The idea of protecting national cultural heritage grew gradually until such time as the first scientific research, development of standards and principles of care and maintenance. Today Zamość was inscribed on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage. Many things made, much remains to be done.

Artykuł prezentuje wybrane poglądy najważniejszych twórców i teoretyków modernizmu na metody projektowania urbanistyki i architektury, próbując wskazać, które z nich stanęły w sprzeczności z tradycją tworzenia i rozwijania się miasta europejskiego. Analizując teksty i wybrane realizacje można prześledzić drogę kształtowania się poglądów, które modyfi kując, przeobrażając, a wreszcie kontestując formy i sens istnienia detalu architektonicznego, następnie kompozycji architektonicznej i urbanistycznej doprowadziły do odstąpienia od tradycyjnej idei przestrzeni miejskiej, co w ostatecznym efekcie stworzyło nową koncepcję organizmu miejskiego.

The Author undertakes an analysis of role of the Napoleonic legend in the Polish historical studies of the I 9th and 20th centuries.

Conservation of the Old Town Zamość began to realize almost a hundred years ago. Then the eminent preachers of culture in the early period. 20.year inter-made idea of restoring the prestige of the works of Polish culture. The idea of protecting national cultural heritage grew gradually until such time as the first scientific research, development of standards and principles of care and maintenance. Today Zamość was inscribed on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage. Many things made, much remains to be done.

The article is devoted to the ancient tradition in the European art and the impact of antiquity on our European identity. The issue of reception of ancient models in art, in particular in the architecture of the Middle Ages, thus the epoch that was chronologically closest to the heritage of the Imperium Romanum, has accompanied the author since the very beginning of her academic career. Such personal approach to the issue and strong belief about the significance of the accomplishments of ancient culture for the development of European artistic thought resulted in the fact that the author decided to come back to it. In spite of the passage of time, it is still a valid subject matter, consistently pursued by Polish and foreign researchers.

The authenticity of the historical garden, as defined by the Florence Charter, is conducive to its broad interpretation. In the era of the present crisis of conservation values, the identification of criteria helpful in an objective assessment of the authenticity of both historical and historising forms of greenery is required.

On the example of the restoration’s solutions in the gardens at Wilanów and the condition of selected elements of the urban greenery in Warsaw, it is possible to verify the model of valorization of factors determining the vegetation’s authenticity proposed by the author of the article. This model also allows to emphasize the features determining the role of royal gardens in Wilanów in maintaining the historical horticultural values of modern Warsaw.

This article focuses on an extremely urgent problem of today’s Christian dialogue with China, i.e. the culture (and politics) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and asks whether a Christian dialogue with China – which understand herself as an atheist and Communist state, which, however, is a country of many religious traditions, is possible, and if so in what form? What are its prospects and challenges?

The starting point of the article, after some historical remarks, is a kind of heterotopy of the dialogue in Chinese context, involving (III.1.) the historical and political context, then (III.2) its partners, and fnally (III.3) its forms and contents. in this framework, this article is (IV) refection on the challenges, opportunities and prospects of the Christian dialogue with Chinese culture. This refection is not taken here from the standpoint of theology, but is rather a phenomenological description of the status quo. At the end of the article (V) some statements of pope John Paul II with regard to the dialogue of Christianity with Chinese culture are quoted as a kind of summary.

The article states a great asymmetry of partners of the dialogue in China caused by the restrictive religious policy. There are some forms of dialogue which, however, are realized outside of the institutionalized Christianity, i.e. the Christian Churches. The Churches themselves, due to their historical background, are not very interested in or prepared for an inter-religious dialogue.

This article discusses the multi-threaded and multi-dimensional process of preparing a technical designs that lead to the introduction of new forms of use into existing urban and architectural structures of high historical value. It covers research concerning formal and spatial determinants, associated with local law in selected European countries. Its results point to concise, precise and easily understandable provisions in terms of local law concerning planned development in areas under heritage conservation, which is conducive to a climate of social acceptance of constraints and prohibitions that — some — may consider significant.

Without question Tadeusz Nowak reached the height of his poetic powers in a series of poems he called psalms (Psalms for Home Use, 1959; Psalms, 1971; and New Psalms, 1978). Although they form a distinctive group with common characteristics, it is hard to see what could possibly connect them with the lofty verses of the Book of Psalms. Having said that it can be argued that they belong to a Polish tradition of psalms developed by Kochanowski, Kochowski and Krasiński. The Polish psalms come in two varieties, those with sweeping visions of national history and identity, and the homely, or more personal, in focus and tone. Nowak rarely mentions the grand themes, yet when he does so his utterances are pregnant with meaning (though with no touch of the messianic fervour typical of the Polish psalms). His Psalms for Home Use are decidedly ‘homely’ in the sense of being personal and private (even autobiographical), and because they exhibit a mind of the common people from the country. If there is any connection between Nowak’s Psalms and their Biblical prototype it is maintained not so much by the occasional literary allusion as by the casting of the characters in the poems in the role of modern psalmists. Like King David, they know they are sinners, and that knowledge imparts to their ‘psalms’ the candidness of a cry from the depth.

This article examines a cycle of poems by Maria Kurecka, the acclaimed writer and translator, in which she mourns the loss of her husband, Witold Wirpsza, who died in 1985. Held by the archives of the Pomeranian Library in Szczecin, these unpublished poems were written in the final years of her life. In this article they are positioned and read against the background of Polish funerary poetry and its traditions. Apart from having single poems published in literary magazines, Maria Kurecka produced just one volume of poetry, Trzydzieści wierszy ( Thirty Poems, 1987). In fact, though, there may be quite a lot of poems that she chose to keep private. Remembered as an outstanding translator of German literature, Maria Kurecka the poet is virtually unknown. It is hoped that by drawing attention to her poetic work this article will contribute to a better appreciation of her achievement.

For centuries, the roof has been a reminiscence, the symbol of basic human shelter and territory. Using the example of several ethnic groups living in Southeast Asia, Bhutan and Poland, the basic determinants of roof shape creation in vernacular architecture are discussed and similarities highlighted. In wooden architecture in different regions of the world, the form and construction of the roof are determined primarily by local conditions: climatic conditions, available materials, local tradition, culture, customs. Often it is the shape of the roof that determines the visual identity of a given ethnic group, with its traditions and way of life. The author points out that societies from different regions of the world with no cultural ties created wooden architecture based on the same factors and that the similarities are already present at the level of thinking patterns resulting, for example, from the need to emphasize the importance of religious buildings by means of the stacked, pent hip form of the basic roof.

This article is a critical reappraisal of Juliusz Słowacki’s translation of Calderón’s El príncipe constant (1843), which acquired a place of its own in Słowacki’s oeuvre and continued to attract a lot of interest throughout the 20th century. Its lasting appeal is due to its extraordinary unity of tone, dramatic construction and stylized language, which in effect, as some critics have said, out-Baroques Calderón’s Baroque original. This article analyzes this contention in detail and tries to answer the question what were the sources and reasons of Słowacki’s fascination with the 17-th century Spanish poet and playwright. The second part of the article deals with two of the 20th-century stage productions of the drama and the adapters’ handling of Słowacki’s text. The summary includes a brief survey of the treatment Calderón’s heirs accorded to his key trope perigrinatio vitae (‘life is pilgrimage’).

This article deals with Makryna, a forgotten drama in five acts and a prologue pub-lished in 1929 by Antoni Waśkowski. The analysis focuses on the drama’s intertextual dialogue with the history, literature and mythology of Polish Romanticism and the mod-ernist reception of those issues in Stanisław Wyspiański’s Legion (1901). The article takes to task the critical consensus that sees Waśkowski as a second-rank epigone of Romanti-cism and the Young Poland movement. In fact, it argues, Makryna challenges the re-ceived historiosophic vision of Poland’s history embodied in the work of, among others, Stanisław Wyspiański, Waśkowski’s literary master. The author of Makryna is uncom-promising in his denunciation of the 19th-century revolutionary movements and some aspects of the Polish Romantic culture, especially the messianic commitment of ‘national prophets’ like Makryna Mieczysławska, Juliusz Słowacki (the poem Rozmowa z Matką Makryną Mieczysławską [ A Conversation with Mother Makryna Mieczysławska]), Adam Mickiewicz, Andrzej Towiański.

The paper concerns biblical heritage in Polish medieval and early modern literature. In it's first section the author presents the first Polish psalters and their influence upon religious poetry of the time. The second part focuses on the development of biblical scholarship in medieval and Renaissance Poland, presents the most important old translations of the Bible and shortly discusses their impact on Polish literary culture. The last part of the study shows how various types of biblical plots and characters were present in old Polish drama and theatre, in religious hymns and epics, how biblical patterns inspired certain literary genres; it also stresses cer- tain significant differences between Protestant and Catholic authors of the time. The conclusion of the paper points out serious need for more systematic researches and studies in the subject of biblical tradition in old Polish literature.

This paper focuses on three issues. First, it is about the context and environment of pre-Nicene theology. It is emphasized that pre-Nicene theology did not neglect ca-techetical and liturgical reflection (ad intra) while at the same time successfully ente-red into a critical and creative dialogue with both the Semitic and Greco-Roman world where first Christians lived (ad extra). For contemporary theology its means that it cannot reject historical reasoning, placed in space and time. The second part stresses that, in spite of different situations and all historical and cultural contexts, theology before Nicea was above all an understanding of Sacred Scripture to which the key is the Risen Christ as the source and definitive fulfilment of the inspired writings. Finally, the third part of the paper focuses on the existential and spiritual experience from which pre-Nicene theology originated. For this theology the Gospel of Christ is not just the rule of faith but also the rule of life. This leads to a conclusion that a contem-porary theologian is a to take up an existential-personalistic reflection on Revelation using the historical-hermeneutic method .