Ruch Literacki

This essay deals with, or rather attempts to explore, the problem of irony and humour (sensu largo) in the Bible. On the whole Polish theology, homiletics and academic biblical studies have hardly anything to say about it, and when they do mention it, it is done in a rather perfunctory and unsatisfactory manner. This article asks what may be reasons for this ‘exegetical retouch’ (tabooing?), i.e. why has the question of biblical irony, which is a staple of international scholarship, received so little attention in Poland? Why do contemporary Polish biblical and homiletic studies cultivate a staid and solemn tone, and steer clear of a direct and plain exposition laced with subtle irony and a touch of asteism, a sure sign of a wise sense of humour that characterizes ancient Judaism? For Gary Webster, Terri Bednarz and Yehuda Radday the recognition level of biblical humour, sophisticated wordplay or irony depends on the reader’s competence, his linguistic and cultural sensitivity, his ability to detect cognitive presuppositions, and his knowledge of relevant contexts. Yet even a thorough understanding of the biblical text and its cultural conditioning cannot rule out doubts, moot points and interpretative dilemmas that bedevil the work of every translator and hermeneutic analyst and stoke up unending debates.

This article outlines the approach adopted by Władysław Syrokomla (the pen name of Ludwik Kondratowicz) in his translation of Latin verse and examines, by analyzing some of the poems he translated into Polish, how it worked in practice. He believed that the translator should strive for an empathic attunement to the writers voice (Einfühlung) while ‘remaining oneself’ and that abandoning ‘slavish imitation’ was the best way to animate a poem (an approach much criticized by philological authorities). These ideas are discussed in the fi rst part of the article; the second part contains analyses of his translations of Latin odes written by Maciej Sarbiewski, i.e. Ode I 19 (Ad caelestem adspirat patriam), II 3 (Ad suam testudinem), and IV 12 (Ad Ianum Libinium. Solitudinem suam excusat). Syrokomla does not engage in any intertextual games with the ancients; instead, he adapts the original to the formal and stylistic conventions of his time, most notably the Romantic concept of the poem as a projection of a poetic consciousness (‘ego’). In effect, Sarbiewski’s (neo) classical poetic personas become versions of the Romantic hero, most conspicuously in the case of Ode IV 12.

Twentieth-century historians of Polish literature (e.g. Henryk Markiewicz and Grażyna Borkowska) unanimously agree that Waleria Marrené-Morzkowska was at best a second-rank writer. It seems that such negative opinions are founded, fi rst of all, on the critics’ low view of her favourite genre, the popular romance; and secondly on a critical survey of her work written in 1966 by Irena Wyczańska for a multivolume Guide to Polish Literature of the 19th and 20th Century (Obraz literatury polskiej XIX i XX wieku). This article attempts to revise the established view of her fiction by analyzing some of works, i.e. two novels, Leonora’s Husband (Mąż Leonory, 1883) and The Little Blue Book (Błękitna książeczka, 1876), and the short story A Duplex Woman (Dwoista, 1889). This reappraisal draws on the favourable assessments of her work of the first generation of her readers, among them writer Teodor Jeske-Choiński, literary historian Henryk Galle and Piotr Chmielowski, a leading literary scholar of the late 19th century. In their view her work rose above the level of run-of-the-mill romances and didactic fi ction thanks to her skill in combining the conventions of the realist novel with plots of popular romance.

This article examines Słowacki’s preoccupation with eroticism in some of his works and in his correspondence. The first part focuses on his poem ‘In Switzerland’ in which the relationship between the characters is shrouded in ambiguity and the sexual theme is treated in an elliptical manner. Beatrix Cenci, a Romantic drama showing the fi lthy, predatory aspects of sexuality and eroticism, is analysed in the second part of the article. It is followed by a discussion of Słowacki’s correspondence with Leonard Niedźwiecki, conducted in French. The article examines the ways in which the choice of the French language appears to have infl uenced the poet’s articulation of his intimate experiences and desires.

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.

This is an interpretation of Ireneusz Iredyński’s short novel Manipulation in the context of acedia, a state of depressive indolence and spiritual apathy. This psychological condition received its earliest description in the writings of the Desert Fathers (most notably Evagrius Ponticus), Christian hermits who lived in the Egyptian desert in the 3rd-4th Century A.D. The article lists and analyzes some of the acedic symptoms and motifs that recur in the experience of the main character of Manipulation (i.e. temptation by demons, suicidal fantasies, imprisonment in a cell); it also examines the temporal structure of the narration. For intertextual reference the discussion reaches out to the writings of Evagrius Ponticus and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Possessed.