Full-text resources of CEJSH and other databases are now available in the new Library of Science.
Visit https://bibliotekanauki.pl

Results found: 8

first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last

Search results

help Sort By:

help Limit search:
first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last
EN
This article examines a phenomenon associated with a certain – and today increasingly common – attitude in life that can most simply be described as the marriage of inauthenticity with imitationism. The author focuses her attention on feelings of love (as particularly ‘severe’, and at the same time probably the most mythologised), or rather on their literary depiction, which allows an accurate diagnosis to be made of the sensibility typical of a consumer society obsessed with money, subject to the dictates of mass media and under pressure from the ideals and ideas of pop culture. A diagnosis of this kind comes in the form of Jacek Dehnel’s short story Miłość korepetytora [Love of the Tutor], which together with three other stories comprises the volume Balzakiana (2008). The young Polish writer, attempting to determine the condition of Polish society after the political transformation in 1989, makes conscious reference to the distant tradition of realistic prose from the legacy of Honoré de Balzac. As for a review of the sphere of individual feelings and emotions falsified by various stereotypes and abstract ideas, one can look to a tradition closer to Dehnel: namely the only novel of Karol Irzykowski – Pałuba [The Hag] (1903). The article shows some commonalities between the Young Poland concept of ‘successive-world phenomena’ and the contemporary vision of determining the emotional sphere through pop culture templates on the experience of romantic elation. References to the diagnoses of Abraham Moles, Milan Kundera and Hermann Broch allow, additionally in the cited contexts, the issues of ‘exaltation as a replacement of spirituality’ and kitsch as ‘our daily aesthetic and morality’ to be highlighted.
PL
Roland Barthes określa Fotografię jako sztukę „niezbyt pewną”, skazującą poniekąd własnych admiratorów na wygłaszanie spostrzeżeń bezładnych, przypadkowych i niejasnych. Jakkolwiek może się to wydać decyzją pa- radoksalną, autor Światła obrazu, zmierzając do uzasadnienia swoich su- biektywnych wrażeń zrodzonych z obcowania z tą sztuką, postanawia wyjść od upodobania, z jakim ogląda niektóre zdjęcia. Takie intuicyjne podejście narzuca się chyba każdemu, komu naprawdę zdarzyło się głęboko przeżyć jakąś fotografię. Trudno nie zapytać w tym kontekście: czym jest ta szcze- gólna reakcja na dane zdjęcie, która przytrafia się ludziom o pewnym rodzaju wrażliwości, a dla innych, być może, musi pozostać niezrozumiała czy wręcz osobliwa? – Ekscytacją? Jakimś rodzajem iluminacji? A może po prostu zdu- mieniem? – Osobiście najpełniej identyfikuję się z następującymi słowami: to, co we mnie wywołuje fotografia, którą szczególnie lubię i wyróżniam, to „(...) podniecenie wewnętrzne, święto, a także oddziaływanie, n a c i s k czegoś niewyrażalnego, co chce się wypowiedzieć (...)”.
EN
The subject of this article is a famous Soviet war-film, Fate of a Man (1959), directed by Sergey Bondarchuk and based on the short-story written by the Nobel Price winner, Mikhail Sholokhov. The proposed analysis aims at uncovering an essential but hidden context of Bondarchuk’s vision of 20th century traumatic human experiences: the Old Testament Book of Job. Focused on the subtle meanings being created between gestures, words, sounds and pictures, the author tries to show the presence as well as the function of biblical images in this ‘most Soviet of the Soviet movies’. It would be useless to seek such dimensions in the literary version of the same story. Owing to his audiovisual sensibility, Bondarchuk turns out to be a real master of ‘soft’ adapting of the religious tradition to the needs of the new ideology.
EN
The first two films of Andrei Zvyagintsev, The Return and The Banishment, deserve to be called modern apocrypha, as they methodically and compre- hensively utilise elements of Christian symbolism and are part of the non- -canonical dialogue with religious messages. The films are characterised by a multiplicity of thematic plans that are outlined mainly through a variety of intertextual references. Among these relationships, a particular place is occupied by biblical and evangelical references, which are mostly mediated by artistic intertexts (especially paintings). The Russian director entangles the viewer in a subtle play of meanings: he evokes canonical scenes and stories, but distorts symbolic references, multiplying and confusing further interpretive clues. In addition to (completely inconsistent) references to the works of others, intertextual tensions are shown in his work on at least two levels: between different elements or levels of a given film (the function of the photograph motif next to the rest of the film text) and between the various films of Zvyagintsev himself (casting the same actor in both leading roles). The talented successor to Tarkovsky follows the mystery of human fate, eager to capture the metaphysical community of critical experiences. This mystery in the work of Zvyagintsev emerges in a quite obvious way from the eternal truths established in archetypes, in biblical and evangelical wis- dom. It is much easier to see it in the fusion of ‛murky imagesʼ than it is to understand.
EN
The subject of analysis in the article is the 2015 British film 45 Years (dir. Andrew Haigh), which is an adaptation of David Constantine’s novel In Another Country. The film presents an intimate image that, in a subtle way, talks about the complexity of feelings of love, constantly oscillate between the desire for intimate closeness and exclusiveness, and the fear of disappointment (longing for emotional fullness and a sense of failure). Inscribing the problem of the dialectical complexity of the emotional life of a man in the context of old age and transience seems unconventional and, therefore, particularly valuable in this film. An important theme in 45 Years, emphasised by the title itself, is the past; invisible on a daily basis, it lurks under the surface of the present. Its iconic (though only imaginary) representation is connected with the plot of the first, lost fiancée of the hero, whose remains – after half a century – are unexpectedly found on a Swiss glacier. The author of the article argues that the fact that it concerns a young woman’s body (preserved in a transparent substance in a strange coincidence), by virtue of intertextual implications, brings an archetypal element to the essentially prosaic story; this archetypal element has then far-reaching consequences in the symbolic plan of the film. Skilful reference to the fairy-tale motif of the ‘glass coffin’ allowed the British director forportraying in this audio-visual story, which talks about the emotional dramas of two elderly people, an image of these internal experiences that in their intimate subtlety remain impenetrable and inexpressible.
EN
The author aims to show that Sidney Lumet’s cinema classic 12 Angry Men (1957) i s not on l y a f i l m a b out p e r s u a s ion (making art the subject of persuasion about something that presents the clash of various attitudes and views), but a l s o a p e r s u a s i ve f i l m (placing an emphasis on persuading the viewer for specific reasons). For the second of these perspectives, non-verbal persuasion is of fundamental importance – implicit, in its immanent essence, because it uses certain narrative techniques and remains in a purposeful relationship with the organisation of its aesthetics. The axis of this kind of organisation is determined by the categories of gravity and lightness, which seem to fundamentally define various aspects of the film, ranging from the weight of the issues discussed to the implications associated with the setting of the drama. Lumet’s work is a model example of a text that methodically engages audiences in an aesthetic-affective game with the help of gravity and lightness, but also gives the game a world-view sense: it shapes beliefs and assessments that weigh not only on viewers’ attitudes towards conflicts that determine the relationship in the film world, but also affect the perception of non-textual reality (not openly making viewers approve the American model of democracy).
first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.