The goal of this article is to present a new reading of a short dedicatory poem offered by an outstanding poet of the Italian Renaissance, Torquato Tasso, to Stanisław Reszka, the abbot in Jędrzejów, the secretary of Stanisław Hozjusz, and, in this specific case, the ambassador of the Polish king Sigismund III to the Kingdom of Naples. The poet and the ambassador met in 1594 in Naples, where both were recovering from illnesses. Their meeting took place shortly after the publication of Jerusalem conquered, which was a recomposed version of Jerusalem delivered, published in 1593. The poet wished to present his newly created work to men of letters and in common opinion it would have been difficult to find in Naples anyone more estimable than Reszka in those days. Torquato Tasso offered to Stanisław Reszka a copy of his new book with a dedication in the form of a short, eight-verse poem of his own creation. Until now, the ottava was known from the transcription contained in Bibliografia critica by S. Ciampi and in the Italian edition of Tasso’s letters, published by C. Guasti. In Polish literary circles the text of the poem was known thanks to the work of Professor Windakiewicz, who at the close of the 19th century published it in Polish translation and some time later the original text of the poem. The lead to the British Library copy was discovered during the course of research on early printed books owned or written by Stanisław Reszka and preserved in the collection of the Jagiellonian Library. With the generous help of Stephen Parkin, the curator of the Italian collection in the British Library, the original of the autograph was found, and thus it became possible to compare the existing texts with the original. During the comparison it appeared that the transcription given by Ciampi with the help of the Roman bookseller Giovanni Petrucci differs in some places from the British Library original. The author proposes a new reading of several uncertain places based on his own palaeographic experience as well as on the help of relevant reference works from the epoch.
In the autumn of 2009 the Jagiellonian Library became the depositary of a large, valuable and interesting collection of printed books from the library of the Camaldolese Monastery in Bielany (Krakow). The work on processing the collection began almost immediately after all the prints had been taken over by the Jagiellonian Library. Two groups of employees have been involved in the work, both from the Resource Processing Department and the Antique Books Department, in line with the natural division into modern and old prints. The Camaldolese collection from Bielany has been enclosed in the monastery and unavailable to most readers; now the very books which for many years have been the source of knowledge, assistance and cognitive tools to a narrow circle of monks may be accessed by all interested persons. In the next year, after basic processing of the collection, the books will create an extremely interesting research opportunity.
PL
Od jesieni 2009 roku Biblioteka Jagiellońska stała się depozytariuszem obszernej, cennej i bardzo interesującej kolekcji druków pochodzących z biblioteki Klasztoru Ojców Kamedułów na krakowskich Bielanach. Opracowanie księgozbioru zostało rozpoczęte niemal bezpośrednio po przejęciu wszystkich druków przez Bibliotekę Jagiellońską. Do opracowania zaangażowano dwie grupy pracowników, rekrutujących się z Oddziału Opracowania Zbiorów bądź z Oddziału Starych Druków, zgodnie z naturalnym podziałem na druki nowe i starodruki. Biblioteka kamedułów z Bielan była przez stulecia zamknięta za klauzurą i niedostępna dla większości czytelników, lecz teraz książki, które przez wiele lat stanowiły źródło wiedzy, pomoc i środek poznawczy dla wąskiego grona zakonników, mogą w rozmaity sposób służyć wszystkim zainteresowanym. W przyszłym roku, po zakończeniu podstawowej części opracowania tego zbioru, otworzy się niezwykle interesujące pole badawcze, jakim będzie możliwość pracy nad całością kolekcji.
The paper attempts to consider the problem of W. H. Auden’s political engagement in the 1930s in the context of his (in)famous decision to leave England and settle down in the USA. The transatlantic journey of the eponymous member of so-called “Auden generation” prompted certain critics (notably Randall Jarrell) to set up a distinct caesura between the “English” and the “American” Auden, giving primacy to the accomplishments of the former and downplaying the works of the latter. As it is argued, America was not the place of the poet’s radical volte-face, but only a certain important, logical stage (and not a final one) in his personal and poetic evolution. His entanglements with politics were often mythologized, and occasional public and semi-political verse he “committed” often tended to subvert any attempts to pigeonhole the author in terms of his ideological stance.
James Joyce’s neologism “debths” (Finnegans Wake) that Susan Howe elects for the title of her 2017 volume of poetry points to at least three semantic coordinates of “obligation,” “trespass,” and “demise,” never-due to its implied transaction between the sound and the spelling-fully yielding to or being appropriated by any stable signification. In Debths, the end of life, writing, and, perhaps, literature are palpable, if overtly manifested, currents of poetic discourse. In my article, I advance the idea of recognizing this tripartite taxonomy as a variant of what Divya Victor calls “extremity.” Within this context, I demonstrate the emergence of a dialogic, intertextual, and appropriative subjectivity of the poet.
Niniejszy artykuł rozważa wielowymiarowe związki pomiędzy tekstem „The Shawl” Cynthii Ozick a finałowym dystychem z „Fugi śmierci” Paula Celana, który amerykańska pisarka wybrała jako motto swojej holocaustowej prozy. Intertekstualna analiza obu tekstów – tworzących wspólnie jeden literacki „midrasz” – ujawnia nie tylko identyfikowalne paralele na poziomie języka i obrazowania, lecz również mniej wyraźne, lecz wciąż interpretacyjnie znaczące odniesienia Ozick i Celana do motywu „śmierci i dziewczyny” obecnego w szesnastowiecznym malarstwie niemieckim (Grien, Deutsch) i niemieckiej muzyce (Bach, Schubert, Wagner).
EN
The article examines diverse relations between Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl and the final distich of Paul Celan’s “Deathfugue,” which the American writer chose as an epigraph to her Holocaust prose. An intertextual analysis of both texts (which relate to each other in a midrash-like manner) demonstrates the existence of numerous parallels in the language and imagery used by both authors, as well as their identifiable references to the motif of “Death and the Maiden,” which can be found in German paintings (Grien, Deutsch) and music (Bach, Schubert, Wagner).
The article contains a brief description of the latest project of the Jagiellonian Library, one of the oldest cultural institutions in Poland, a project that is an expression of concern for cultural heritage. The so-called Bieniszew collection is a collection of about 2,000 (mainly) early printed books, compiled in the Camaldolese Monastery in Bieniszew probably in the 1950s. The Jagiellonian Library, which has long been a repository and safe haven of a large book collection from the Camaldolese Monastery in Bielany, Cracow, has now acquired an exceptional opportunity to secure a collection of early printed books from Bieniszew. During an inspection of the collection, it turned out that the so-called Bieniszew collection had in fact been compiled from the remains of libraries of non-existent Camaldolese monasteries in Warsaw and the Wigry Island. In the article the author describes how the collection was transported, registered and secured in the Jagiellonian Library storeroom.
This article is a reworked and extended version of the author’s paper presented at the conference “The book collection of the Camaldolese monastery of Bielany, now in the Jagiellonian Library”, held in Kraków in February 2013. The article provides an overview of the characteristics of the Bielany library, with a brief glimpse into the history of that collection, some references to the previous owners of the books, and basic information about the contents of the library. It also shows how the book collection was catalogued and is now available via the web interface of the library catalogue.
This article provides basic information about one of the major projects currently run by the Jagiellonian Library. This project, created and directed by Dr. Jacek Partyka from the Jagiellonian Library, was started in February 2013 and will last for three years, until February 2016. This project has been given the whole financial asset that it required and involves the work of a large team of high-class specialist in the field. The aim of the project is to conduct a thorough research on the so-called ‘Berlin collection’ (Berlinka) with the aim of deciphering the provenance notes on the Polonica. It will cover early printed books, manuscripts, musical prints and autographs, as well as modern books, and newspapers. All these objects will be catalogued, scanned, and eventually published in Jagiellonian Digital Library, which is the largest digital library in Poland. Thanks to this, they will become available to researchers worldwide.
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