Ruch Literacki

This article is an attempt to describe and classify an array of contemporary texts about the death of a parent. Rather than drawing on the methodology and conceptual appara-tus developed on the basis of psychoanalysis this study makes use of the anthropological approach, which, it is assumed, can do full justice to the specific nature of the texts and the motivation declared by their authors. The first part of the article contains a catalogue of selected bereavement texts published in Poland in the last twenty years, arranged in a hierarchical order indicative of their canonical significance. The justification, metho-dology and criteria of that arrangement are discussed in the following section. The third part presents a typology of the collected material. The classification takes into account the following characteristics: subject, commonplaces and recurring themes, narration, intertextual relations, and style. Generally, the classificatory scheme reveals two narra-tive matrices (as defined by Vinciane Despret). They are the ‘inbred’ (i.e. traditional, or high) matrix, and the alternative (i.e. low or eclectic matrix). A comparative analysis of the texts about loss and grief caused by the death of a parent suggests that the division and the choice of discourse is determined by the ideological and political interpretation of the child-parent relationship functioning in the culture, which, in turn, is conditioned by the social role, status and gender of the writer. The writing utensils from the title, the fountain pen and the BIC pen (ball pen) in a way emblematize the two narrative matrices and offer a clue to the writer’s gender.

This is an analysis of the literary expressions of fear in the poetry of Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer. Intense fear is not only one of the dominant emotions depicted in his work but it also underpins his poetic technique. The article examines the manner in which he communicates the somatic experience of dread, his use of bodily metaphors in descriptions of nature, his poetic landscapes of fear, the records of his nightmares, the modernist phobophobia as well the sources of the high anxiety (to do with the mysteries of life, death and man’s inner life) that dogged him at all times. In its readings the article draws on the studies in affect theory, somatopoetics and psychoanalytic criticism.

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.

Tadeusz Rittner steered clear of political themes in his dramas with the single excep-tion of the Wrogowie bogaczy (The Enemies of the Rich). First performed in 1921, the play exposes the insane madness of social (Bolshevik) revolution. At the same time, though, the tragic horror is handled with ironic distance and diverted into absurd grotesque. Moreover, Rittner invests the individual scenes and exchanges between the characters with hints and references that turn the story into a playful game with the theatrical traditions, including the familiar set of plot drivers, i.e. the pursuit of power, love/eroti-cism and art/imagination. For all its cleverness, the play, when staged at the Słowacki Theatre in Cracow, turned out a complete failure. One simple reason for it was that Rittner’s broad, generalized vision failed to meet the current demand for a more con-crete reenactment of historical events.

This article discusses the unknown circumstances of Stanisław Rembek’s debut as a poet. Stanisław Rembek is the author of highly acclaimed novels about the Polish--Soviet War of 1919–1920 and short stories about the January 1863 Uprising. But practi-cally nobody knows that he made his debut as a with ‘O polski Żołnierzu!’ [‘O Polish Soldier!’], published in the college magazine Razem [ Together] in Piotrków. The poem displays a strong influence of Romanticism; the Romantic attitudes and intellectual legacy would later be discussed and infrequently scoffed at by the characters of his novels.

This article deals with the American chapter (World War II) in the lives of three Polish poets, Julian Tuwim, Kazimierz Wierzyński and Jan Lechoń, shown through the eyes of their fourth friend Józef Wittlin and his wife Halina, who spent the rest of their lives in the USA. The article is based on archival materials, most of which in the collections of Houghton Library.