The book Marinetti i futuryzm w Polsce 1909–1939. Obecność – kontakty – wydarzenia by Przemysław Strożek not only adds to the current knowledge of Futurism but most of all increases the awareness of its ambiguous and questionable politico-ideological dimension, which has been largely overlooked in the general reception of the movement. The fascist affiliation of the movement has been usually swept under the rug in the international research. This results from “attempts to reject the embarrassing works that expressed the fascist propaganda”, which right after 1945 formed a distorted view of the movement’s activity so that it would “suit the new image of the post-war Italy”. Thus, it may be said that Strożek’s book contributes substantially to our knowledge of the Polish socio-cultural life in the inter-war period insofar that it sheds new light on some of its aspects that have seemed already settled and defined, and shows how surprisingly strong, given the weakness of the Futurist movement reception in Poland, the impact of Futurism on the shape of contemporary theatre, and even on the socio-political and intellectual life in general, really was. The author refers the dramaturgical principles according to which the Italian Futurist dramas (the so-called syntheses) were composed, presents the Futurist movement in chronological order, and shows in what ways its accomplishments influenced the Polish literary and theatre life. He recounts the failed, but very important for the subsequent reception of the movement, attempts to stage Italian Futurist plays at the Polski Theatre in Warsaw and discusses two Polish premieres of Jeńcy (Prigionieri) by Marinetti (Lvov, 1933; and Cracow, 1937). The discussion of these theatre events is accompanied by an insightful analysis of the influence that the Polish cultural and intellectual circles had on popularising the Italian Futurism in Poland, even though at the same time they turned a blind eye on the work of Polish Futurists.
The author presents a glossary for Wanda Melcer-Rutkowska’s biography, which draws on her social and literary activity in the context of cultural trans-formations at the beginning of the 20th century. Moreover, the author clearly outlines Melcer Rutkowska’s active engagement in a variety of initiatives intended to revolutionise the realm of customs and art. The article draws on the literary output of the author of Miasto zwierząt, indicating the impact it had during the interwar years. Special attention is paid to the forgotten poetry which was eventually included in a compilation of previously printed volumes and those poems which had been formally scattered throughout the press. Two aspects of Melcer-Rutkowska’s literary work were primarily analysed: feministic and avant-garde.
In Cyborg Manifesto Donna Haraway writes: “cyborgs (…) make very problematic the statuses of man or woman, human, artefact, member of a race, individual entity, or body”. This paper returns to the very beginning of thinking about this figure and examines the first protocyborg images created by Futurist and Dada female artists. I also look at Dracula’s Mina Harker as one of the first Western protocyborg figures. I ask to what extent such images anticipated the new forms of subjectivity and how they made the relation between human-nature and human-technology problematic as well as thinking in categories of gender.
The author’s subject of interest is olfactory experience and its effect on the form of the space presented by futurists. The futurists develop new sensitivity, open to “sharp” stimuli, and not avoiding dissonances. The smell becomes in this context a component of the constructed space, appertaining to the forms of intensity, dynamic forms. The scent appeals to intuition rather than reasonable calculation, encouraging the futurist “new opening”. Also a broader context of the considerations seems important: the pursuit, declared in program texts of the futurists, of going beyond the convention of three dimension towards an n-dimensional space experienced with all senses; in other words the will to differentiate the ways of perception in order to enrich special imagination.
The article describes the importance of public performance for the image of the Futurists, mainly of Bruno Jasieński. The impressions that the artists gained from Helena Buczyń-ska’s ‘word-arts’ performance, and Scriabin’s idea of ‘Art Religion’ they were exposed to, inspired the young poets. The article finishes with enumeration of several inspira-tions that are being found in Jasieński’s texts by modern musicians adapting his poetry.
The article discusses the short-lived emergence of Italian futurism in Rijeka, just after the end of World War I, in the context of the political adventure of Gabrielle DʼAnnunzio, who, with the help of his supporters, an ardite, tried to annex the city to the Kingdom of Italy. At that moment, the avant-garde spirit of Italian futurism could manifest itself here in all its main features: activism, antagonism, nizilism and agonism. In addition to the founder of Italian futurism, Filippo Tommas Marinetti, Mario Carli, Guido Keller and Giovanni Comisso stayed and worked in Rijeka during 1919. The article seeks to describe their actions on the basis of newspaper reports in the Rijeka daily La Vedetta dʼItalia.
The authors of the article, knowing about Wat’s interest in language mechanisms, focus their attention on namopaniki – the genre created by the poet. Arguing with the previous findings which concentrated on the presentation of the properties of semantics of the non-rational futuristic word, they propose an interpretation based on the demonstration of the inner energy of text.
The exhibition “Enrico Prampolini. Futuryzm, scenotechnika i teatr polskiej awangardy” (“Enrico Prampolini. Futurism, Stage Design and the Polish Avant-gard Theatre”), open at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź between 9 June and 10 October 2017, was one of the most intense encounters with the Avant-garde last year, which was a jubilee year. The exhibition offered an erudite journey that followed the interests of the curator Przemysław Strożek, a researcher specialising in Italian Futurism and its reception in Poland. Despite a clearly defined goal of setting side by side the creations of Prampolini and the achievements of Polish Avant-garde theatre, it was not a classical “thesis exhibition,” which can be regarded as the curator’s fault or as his credit, and the judgment on this point depended mostly on how well versed in Avant-garde movements the viewer was. A complex, multi-threaded narrative that the exhibits amassed in a rich and representative selection were telling proved not accessible enough for some of the public, while other visitors found it exquisitely enlightening. The connexions between avant-gardists of different countries were displayed in a subtle way, and the space in which the visitors could explore them afforded a chance to investigate the exhibition freely and at one’s own pace. The endevour was all the more appealing due to the fact that the setting made a clear linear narrative virtually impossible, favouring a meandering and dialogical tale instead. The outcome was a fascinating maze of compelling, and sometimes difficult to discern, feedback relations between the Polish and Italian avant-gardes of the 1920s and 1930s.
In his article, the author discusses the problem of youth that occurs in the poetry of Polish avant-garde poets. On the example of the interwar poems of Anatol Stern and Czesław Miłosz among others the researcher shows the functioning of the two major variants of the paradigm of youth in this poetry. The first one is related to the creation of youth as the ruthless force that forms new laws and qualities of life. The poets of the Second Avant-Garde present another model of youth in their works. The age of adolescence becomes a pretext for them to verify the existing world and settle with its naïve reception. Catastrophic moods are dominant in their art. Between these two variants of the paradigm of youth there are Adam Ważyk’s visions of adolescence, in which the researcher indicates the presence of idyllic threads and child’s imagination.
The article is an attempt to interpret the only book published by Jerzy Jankowski, a forerunner of Polish futurism who is often overlooked in literary history related to the beginnings of the avant-garde movement. Tram wpopszek ulicy (Tram crossways on the street), published in 1920, is presented in terms of innovative phenomena in Polish and European poetry. Such a point of view reveals its precursory character, despite its passeism repeatedly diagnosed by critics. The key word and the starting point of the analysis is the first word of the title – tram, whose ambiguity makes it not only a sign of a modern city but also a metaphor of the construction of the entire book and its historical location. Further analysis leads to conclusions that, on the one hand, reveal the complicated meaning of the vitalistic futurist concept of life and, on the other, indicate aporias and tensions between symbolism and avant-garde, originality and repetition, materiality and spirituality, as well as aesthetics and the social function of art. These seem to be a hidden dimension of Jankowski’s work.
Artykuł stanowi próbę analizy futurystycznego dyskursu pronatalistycznego na podstawie manifestów programowych oraz artystycznych realizacji. Postulaty reprodukcyjne, na szeroką skalę obecne w wystąpieniach polskich futurystów, sytuowane zwykle w obszarze typowego dla lat dwudziestych witalizmu, ukazane zostają w perspektywie biopolitycznej, eksponującej miejsce przecięcia tego, co biologiczne z horyzontem politycznym i społecznym. Autorka próbuje prześledzić zwłaszcza polityczne uwikłania „projektu populacyjnego” polskich futurystów, który wykazuje liczne paradoksy, sytuując się pomiędzy pronatalistyczną retoryką właściwą nacjonalistycznym dyskursom (z jednej strony, tym propagowanym przez F.T. Marinettiego, z drugiej natomiast, konstruowanym w Polsce bezpośrednio po odzyskaniu niepodległości), a myśleniem w kategoriach wspólnoty, rozpoczynającej się od materialnych funkcji ciała. W tym drugim kontekście, reprodukcyjne postulaty są nie tylko atakiem na burżuazyjną moralność, ale ściśle wiążą się z futurystyczną krytyką wszelkich instytucji społecznych i aparatu państwa z jego biopolitycznymi dyspozycjami.
EN
The article constitutes an attempt at analysing futurist pronatalist discourse, on the basis of the manifestos and artistic praxis of the Futurists. The reproduction postulates, prevalent in the works of the Polish Futurists and usually placed in the context of vitalism, characteristic of the 1920s, are shown from a biopolitical perspective, emphasizing the intersection of the biological with the political and social horizons. The author attempts to trace especially the political entanglements of the “population project” of the Polish Futurists, which turns out be marked by numerous paradoxes, situating itself between the pronatalist rhetoric typical of nationalistdiscourse (on the one hand, the discourse promoted by F.T. Marinetti, and on the other, the one formulated in Poland directly after regaining independence) and thinking in terms of a community which starts from the material functions of the body. In this second context, the reproduction postulates are not only an attack on bourgeois morality, but are closely connected with the futurist critique of all social institutions and the state apparatus with its biopolitical dispositions.
The article Matoš and Croatian Postmodernism shows that it was Boro Pavlović (1921–2001), the anticipator and „the father” of Croatian postmodernism, the author of fifty collections of poems and numerous media creations of Walter Benjaminʼs provenance in the 50ʼs (exhibition of poems We in 1942, collection News in 1954, the project-exhibition Encyclopedia poetica in 1957/1958, and computer poem MOrpheus in 1978), who figuratively, impressively, but accurately summed up the importance of the impressionist, symbolist and Art Nouveau author A.G.M. for the overall Croatian literature.
The subject of this article is Guillaume Faye’s concept of archeofuturism. In Faye’s opinion, Europe finds itself now in crisis, which will lead it to the implosion of the contemporary sociopolitical order. He thinks that archeofuturism is the way to overcome the crisis. The text outlines the concepts of the convergence of catastrophes, vitalistic constructivism, and archeofuturism. To sum up – the article describes the contemporary state of Europe (in Faye’s perspective) and the method for revolutionary change.
PL
Tematem artykułu jest koncepcja archeofuturyzmu Guillaume’a Faye’a. W opinii Faye’a Europa znajduje się w obecnie w kryzysie, który doprowadzi do upadku obecnego systemu społeczno-politycznego. Uważa on, że sposobem na jego przezwyciężenie jest archeofuturyzm. W tekście omówione zostały pojęcia: konwergencji katastrof, witalistycznego konstruktywizmu i archeofuturyzmu. Podsumowując – przedstawiony został stan obecny europejskiego systemu politycznego (w perspektywie G. Faye’a) i metoda na jego rewolucyjną zmianę.
In my article I present a short, historical overview of the literary works of Bruno Jasieński, put in a chronological order and seen from the Marxist perspective. I refer to the statements on Jasienski’s oeuvre made by Polish Marxist critics both before and after WWII and present their judgments about his books. I adopt a three-part division of Jasieński life and works proposed by Krzysztof Jaworski. Firstly, I focus on what can be called as a futuristic and salon socialism period. In this part I analyze Jaśnieński’s poetical debut – But w butonierce, a volume widely seen as being strongly influenced by the Russian Ego-Futurism. I also present a brief overview of the role played by Jasieński in the unification of Polish futurist movement. Finally, I refer to Pieśń o głodzie, a narrative poem in which Jasieński combined futuristic and socialist inspirations, effectively inventing a new kind of Polish poetry. In the next section of the article, I focus on what may be called a revolutionary formation period, in which Janieński organized Polish Workers Theater. I conclude this part with an analysis of I Burn Paris, a novel depicting burning down of the capital of European bourgeoisie. The last section covers the soviet period of Jasieński’s life, starting with his experiments with merging fantastic narratives with a new-born socrealistic aesthetics in Bal manekinów. In this part I focus on the arguably most important work of the soviet period – Ziemia zmienia skórę, a novel about building socialism in Tajikistan, which became an obligatory read in Tajik public schools. In conclusion, I offer a short reassessment of the opposing views on Jasiński’s work proposed by Polish critics.
Dramaturgia przełomu XIX i XX wieku stanowi niezwykle ciekawe zjawisko. Jest ona pełna różnorodnych koncepcji, idei, poszukiwań i pytań. Wśród nich oczywiście jedno z najbardziej eksponowanych miejsc zajmuje pytanie o sens (lub bezsens) kultury, cywilizacji i świata. Wydaje się, że dramaturdzy tego okresu, w głębokim przekonaniu o nadchodzącym kresie dotychczasowych wartości, porządku i sensu, starają się odnaleźć i zaprezentować w swoich dziełach świat przyszłości - stworzony z poszukiwania i przekonania. Wśród dramatów tego okresu odnaleźć można zarówno eschatologiczne proroctwa, jak i najbardziej odległe wizje uporządkowanego świata, są one więc swoistym poszukiwaniem sensu w bezsensie. Dodatkowo można w nich odnaleźć różne stanowiska światopoglądowe, kształtujące światy sensu: od Sołowiowskich krain Duszy Świata, poprzez religijne reminiscencje i transformacje po obrazy futurystyczne.
XX
Dramaturgy of 19th and 20th century breakthrough is an amazingly interesting phenomenon. It is full of various concepts, ideas, researches and questions. There is one question which is obviously one of the most exposed places, the question of sense (or nonsense) of culture, civilisation and world. It seems that dramaturges of that period, in deep belief about the coming end of existing values, peace and sense try to find and present in their pieces of art the world of the future—created from searching and belief. Among the dramas from that period we can find both eschatological prophesies and most remote visions of peaceful world, therefore they are characteristic searching of sense in nonsense. Furthermore, among them we can find various outlooks on life, creating sense worlds: from Solovyov’s land of Souls World through religious reminiscences and transformations to futuristic pictures.
The exhibition “Enrico Prampolini. Futuryzm, scenotechnika i teatr polskiej awangardy” (“Enrico Prampolini. Futurism, Stage Design and the Polish Avant-gard Theatre”), open at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź between 9 June and 10 October 2017, was one of the most intense encounters with the Avant-garde last year, which was a jubilee year. The exhibition offered an erudite journey that followed the interests of the curator Przemysław Strożek, a student of Italian Futurism and its reception in Poland. Despite a clearly defined goal of setting side by side the creations of Prampolini and the achievements of Polish Avant-garde theatre, it was not a classical “thesis exhibition,” which can be regarded as the curator’s fault or as his credit, and the judgment on this point depended mostly on how well versed in Avant-garde movements the viewer was. A complex, multi-threaded narrative that the exhibits amassed in a rich and representative selection were telling proved not accessible enough for some of the public, while other visitors found it exquisitely enlightening. The connexions between avant-gardists of different countries were displayed in a subtle way, and the space in which the visitors could explore them afforded a chance to investigate the exhibition freely and at one’s own pace. The endevour was all the more appealing due to the fact that the setting made a clear linear narrative virtually impossible, favouring a meandering and dialogical tale instead. The outcome was a fascinating maze of compelling, and sometimes difficult to discern, feedback relations between the Polish and Italian avant-gardes of the 1920s and 1930s.
PL
Wystawa Enrico Prampolini. Futuryzm, scenotechnika i teatr polskiej awangardy, którą od 9 czerwca do 8 października 2017 roku oglądać można było w łódzkim Muzeum Sztuki stanowiła jedno z najintensywniejszych spotkań z awangardą w minionym, jubileuszowym roku. Ekspozycja oferowała erudycyjną wyprawę śladami zainteresowań kuratora Przemysława Strożka, badacza włoskiego futuryzmu i dziejów jego polskiej recepcji. Pomimo jasno sprecyzowanego celu, jakim było zderzenie twórczości Prampoliniego z osiągnięciami polskiej awangardy teatralnej, nie była to klasyczna wystawa z „z tezą”, co można było uznać zarówno za niewątpliwą zasługę jak również winę kuratora, a osąd w tej sprawie zależał w głównej mierze od stopnia przygotowania merytorycznego odbiorcy. Wielowątkowa opowieść, jaką snuły zgromadzone tu w bogatym i reprezentatywnym wyborze eksponaty dla części publiczności okazywała się bowiem nie dość przystępna, dla innej zaś rewelacyjna. Zagadnienie międzynarodowych kontaktów pomiędzy przedstawicielami awangardy zaprezentowane zostało w sposób nienachalny, a oddana do użytku zwiedzającego przestrzeń dawała możliwość swobodnej, dostosowanej do stopnia znajomości tematu, eksploracji. Przedsięwzięciu temu sprzyjał teren ekspozycji, który, uniemożliwiając zastosowanie w pełni konsekwentnej, linearnej narracji, skłaniał do opowieści meandrującej i dialogicznej. W efekcie powstał fascynujący labirynt zaprezentowanych sugestywnie, a niekiedy także ukrytych sprzężeń zwrotnych, zachodzących pomiędzy polską i włoską awangardą lat 20. i 30. XX wieku.
The article shows how the political engagement of Polish futurism influenced its poetic representations of crowds. Futurists showed masses as a reservoir of energy strong enough not only to destroy the old regime but also to create a framework for the new order. They described the masses by employing elements of different discourses – conservative, communist and military. These heterogenic representations were bound together by the apotheosis of the revolution against the normative order of modernity (and capitalism).
PL
Artykuł opisuje, w jaki sposób polityczne zaangażowanie polskiego futuryzmu wpłynęło na poetyckie reprezentacje tłumu. Futuryści przedstawiali masy jako rezerwuar energii na tyle silnej, że zdolnej nie tylko do obalenia dotychczasowego porządku, lecz również do stworzenia zrębów przyszłego ładu. A jednocześnie poszukiwali adekwatnych sposobów ich przedstawienia w popularnych słownikach epoki, sięgając po elementy dyskursu konserwatywnego, komunistycznego oraz militarnego. Spoiwem tych heterogenicznych, nie zawsze zbieżnych wyobrażeń była apoteoza rewolty, pojmowanej jako wyzwanie rzucone nowoczesnemu porządkowi (i kapitalizmowi).
Porównanie cywilizacji i kultury w białoruskich pracach teoretycznych i utworach literackich okresu międzywojennego wskazało na problem rozwoju naukowo-technicznego. Autorka artykułu omawia niniejszy temat zarówna z perspektywy kontekstu filozoficznego, jak i na gruncie poszukiwań estetycznych. Mimo że nie skupia uwagi na oryginalnych teoriach białoruskich intelektualistów z początków XX wieku, podkreśla znaczenie doświadczenia innych państw w tym zakresie. Autorka wskazuje na fakt, że pierwsze dekady XX wieku białoruskiej humanistyki były świadkiem wzmożonego zainteresowania wymienioną tematyką. Wynikało to z ogólnych tendencji europejskiej filozofii i sztuki oraz z faktu, że po zwycięstwie rewolucji 1917 roku w licznych publikacjach wzywano do tworzenia kultury nowego typu. Analiza utworów literackich i tekstów kulturoznawczych J. Barychevskogo, P. Dvarkevicha, A. Babareki, T. Klyashtornogo i innych pozwoliła autorce sformułować wniosek, że kontekst białoruskiej literatury w kulturze pierwszych dekad XX wieku świadczy nie tylko o wysokim poziomie estetycznym poezji i krytyki, lecz także o dążeniu do zdefiniowania najważniejszych problemów ludzkości, zwłaszcza trudnych relacji między cywilizacja a kulturą.
EN
Belarusian literature of the interwar period reflected such an important issue as the interpretation of scientific and technological progress in an opposition to civilization and culture in theoretical and literary texts. This topic in the article is discussed from the point of view of both actual philosophical context and aesthetic quest. We are talking about the original theoretical development of Belarusian intellectuals of the early twentieth century as well as considerable importance and mastering of foreign experience because 1920s and 1930s witnessed an increased attention to various aspects of the topic in Belarusian humanistic space. This was due both to general tendencies in the European philosophy and art, and to the fact that after the victory of the Russian Revolution of 1917, publications of the 1920s called to create a new type of culture. The analysis of literary and cultural texts of E. Borichevsky, P. Dvarkevich, A. Babareka, T. Klyashtorny and other authors enables to conclude that the context of Belarusian literature and culture of the 1920s and 1930s reflects not only the high aesthetic level of poetry and criticism, but also the desire to comprehend most significant problems of human existence and complicated relations between civilization and culture.
Artykuł Iwony Mikołajczyk Estetyczne aspekty przestrzeni formistycznej: Czyżewski – Chwistek – Witkacy ujmuje formizm polski w aspekcie związków z metanarracją i abstrakcją. Analiza formy dzieł trzech twórców dowodzi, iż w dialektyce rozwoju kierunku artyści albo wychodzili od przedmiotu, albo go aproksymowali (oddawali w dużym przybliżeniu). Jako znak plastyczny był on dla nich pretekstem do prowadzenia gry metaestetycznej z konwencją artystyczną. Z drugiej strony synteza i autonomia przedmiotu kierują formizm ku abstrakcji. To zawieszenie między metajęzykiem a abstrakcją (obecne też w futuryzmie i kubizmie) powodowane było obawą przed zbyt gwałtownym zerwaniem z tradycją i przekroczeniem przez sztukę granicę zrozumiałości. Albo stanowiło znak rozwoju artystycznego samego artysty.
EN
Iwona Mikołajczyk’s article looks at the Polish formist movement from the point of view of its relations with meta-narration and abstraction. A formal analysis of the works by the three above-mentioned artists proves that within the dialectical development of this current the artists were either using the object as the point of departure or else approximating it. As an artistic sign, the object was a pretext for them to play a meta-aesthetic game with the artistic convention. On the other hand, the synthesis and autonomy of the object leads formism toward abstraction. This sense of being suspended between metalanguage and abstraction (also present in futurism and cubism) was caused by fears of breaking with tradition too completely and thus crossing the boundaries of intelligibility. Or else it was a sign of the artistic development of the artist himself.
A Name in a Buttonhole - Onymy in Poetic Texts (Based on the Example of Bruno Jasieński’s Poetry)This article addresses the issue of the interpretation of proper names in poetry. The state of research on the functions of proper names in literature is well described, but it is possible to note the lack of a fixed interpretation strategy in poetry which means that, despite little interest in poetry, its researchers often try to propose their own methods of analysis. The authors of the article, who tackle onyms in the poetry of Bruno Jasieński, present their own methodological approach to the matter, based on B. Waldenfels’ concept of the “phenomenology of the alien”.
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