The article presents interpretations of various manifestations of “negative cognition” (apophatic) in the literature of early modernism (Young Poland). Negative cognition (which has a rich tradition and dates back to ancient times) on the threshold of modernity, emerged as a response to the crisis of scientist and religious awareness. Found in works by Tadeusz Miciński, Kazimierz Przerwa Tetmajer, Bolesław Leśmian, Jerzy Hulewicz, it takes many forms: from agnosticism, through diverse approaches to the category of “Mystery” to the principle of silence as evidence of belief in the inability to express not only the Transcendence, but any knowledge of reality. The author examines the issue of “the unknowable” in three thematic areas: the subject (I), God, and the world. The final part of the paper contains reflections on silence as the equivalent of shouting, significant for expressionism.
The aim of the article is to argue that Tuwim’s way of conceptualizing both the world and poetry was based on the principle of stanza. In his opinion, the entire world and our experience of it reach us in a stanzaic form. In Tuwim’s writing the stanza could be compared to an atom of poetic structure. It also builds our primary consciousness of language. The stanzaic structure of our poetic and linguistic experience imposes an order on the universe as we see it. Tuwim hears and thinks his world as a stanza.
The article analyses the phenomenon of identity crisis in a “modern man” (“at the threshold of modernity”). Lemański employs a fairy-tale convention, the result, however, is an anti-fairy-tale (to use Anna Czabanowska – Wróbel’s term). Irony, laughter or grotesque elements suggest that the literary intention of the author of Bajki was an interesting commentary on reality (critics, including Zenon Przesmycki, pointed the renaissance of fairy tales found in modernist literature). Lemański’s work is characterised by a somewhat careless approach to the form, which becomes the principle describing the world represented. The theme of destiny, the topos of wandering as well as initiation themes match the fairy-tale convention, albeit processed in an interesting way.
Czesław Miłosz’s The Issa Valley [Dolina Issy] was published in the Paris Literary Institute in 1955 and soon after started paving its way to readers in the author’s native country, in spite of the censorship. This article traces back the novel’s reception in the so-called Thaw (post-Stalin) period (1955–1957) in the light of official domestic publications and the documents of the Censorship Office. Those years saw publication of several argumentative and favourable essays on the novel (by e.g. I. Sławińska, J. Błoński, J. Zawieyski). The censors banned just one extensive discussion text on The Issa Valley, by Jarosław-Marek Rymkiewicz, and this owing to where it was published. A ban on publishing the poet’s works in a nonserial form was maintained. In that transitional period, new directives were coming from the communist-party headquarters, and the censors would often consult the heads of departments they reported to, or the Central Censorship Office directly. The situation grew severer by 1958, with the poet’s name being consistently removed from most publications.
This article shows the outline of problems connected with censoring Czesław Miłosz’s literary output in Poland in the 1950s, when the poet breaks off with the national government and chooses political asylum in France, becoming an émigré. The article looks into (in the space of decade) the periods of particularly tightened control towards Miłosz, shows how the censorship was tightening and relaxing when it came to his name. In the Polish October several poems and an excerpt from the novel The Seizure of Power was published, though – despite publishing advertisements – none of the poet’s books came out.
During political “thaw”, in years 1955−1956 in the People’s Republic of Poland, it write in newspapers about themes banned earlier. One of such many theme formerly banned was censorship (Main Office of Control of Press, Publications and Shows). Journalists wrote about books banned by censorship, prohibited publications and black-listed writers, whose books had removed from libraries and destroyed. Situation is changed in 1958 – it is not allowed to write again about existence and activity of censorship
Celem niniejszego artykułu było uzyskanie odpowiedzi na pytania: jakie zasady i wytyczne stosował Główny Urząd Kontroli Prasy, Publikacji i Widowisk w stosunku do autora "Zniewolonego umysłu" po przyznaniu poecie Nagrody Nobla, gdy stał się on znany na Zachodzie oraz w jakich okolicznościach – wbrew wytycznym cenzury – nazwisko Czesława Miłosza mogło pojawić się w oficjalnych publikacjach. Jako materiał badawczy przyjęto numery „Tygodnika Powszechnego” wydawane od października (po ogłoszeniu decyzji Akademii Sztokholmskiej) do grudnia 1980 roku, które pokazują, jak Miłosz-emigrant był obecny w opiniotwórczym wówczas katolickim czasopiśmie w świetle zapisów cenzury.
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