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1

Pośród rozkoszy i zdziecinnienia. O dystopii Jana Weissa „Mullerdom ma tysiąc pięter”

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Sosnowska D.

Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo

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2014

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issue 4(7)

397-416

EN

A novel by Czech writer Jan Weiss, which was edited in Poland under the title Mullerdom Has One Thousand Floors, is analysed in the present article. It presents a history of reception of the book that provoked a lot of controversial opinions in the past, but which is being rediscovered today. The author of the article suggests a new interpretation of the novel, inspired by present interest in dystopia and by some texts, fundamental for the European culture (Mass revolution by Ortega y Gasset among others), which have warned public opinion against serious threats posed by modern culture. A dystopian significance of Weiss’s novel is compared to visions created by famous anti-utopian book soft hat time, which could have influenced the Czech writer: Zamiatin (We) and Wells (Time Machine). The article stresses the dissimilarity between the threats shown by Weiss and those described by Zamiatin and Wells. According to Weiss the main dangers are: the principle of pleasure and consumption which rules social behaviour, economic domination suppressing moral values, metaphysical depletion and the state of immaturity of the society as well as culture. All of them left the Europeans defenceless against the manipulation by a totalitarian power and hopelessly vulnerable to suppression by a totalitarian system. The article also considers the problem of the novel’s end, which was discussed many times by different critics. The author demonstrates that what has seemed to be an optimistic coda of the story, since the plot turns out to be only a nightmare of an ill protagonist, a creation of a feverish imagination, in fact has nothing to do with optimism. Consciously or not, Weiss added a very sarcastic ending to his novel and made a new commentary to the state of culture and society which should be rather alarming than comforting.

2

Kołowrót religijnych symboli: od Hrabala do czeskiej prozy lat 90. XX wieku. Przypadek „Mefitis” Martina Komárka

100%

Sosnowska D.

Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo

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2017

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issue 7(10)

231-242

EN

The ambiguous presence of religious themes in Czech prose of the end of the twentieth century is not sufficiently described by literary scholars. Czech literary critics did not appreciate the importance of this phenomenon. From the post-secular perspective it is clear that religious themes in literature are a manifestation of the search for metaphysics, crossing the rationalist vision of the world. The author reconstructs the symbolic language used by Martin Komárek when raising the subject of religion. His novel Mefitis is a record of contemporary experience of religiousness.

3

Fryderyk Chopin’s correspondence from the perspective of body studies. The discovery of corporeality

100%

Sosnowska D.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2010

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issue 9

265-282

PL

The author analyses Fryderyk Chopin’s correspondence within the context of the new humanities field of body studies. The socio-cultural anthropology of the body has been an object of study since the 1980s. It has enabled the extraction of the picture of a cultural body inscribed in Chopin’s correspondence, and it has also shown how his conception of his own soma and of the bodies of other people diverge from the Romantic convention of writing about corporeality. In the age of romanticism, sickness and physical weakness were glorified like a gift and a badge of spiritual aristocracy. A suffering and frail complexion became a value in the salons - a laissezpasser to the world of artistic sensitivity. Chopin never succumbed to that fashion. His record of his corporeal experience is strikingly un-Romantic, as can be seen, for example, when comparing it with the narration of sickness contained in the correspondence of Zygmunt Krasiński. The corporeal experience displayed by the great musician is striking in its modernity. Chopin rejects the Romantic lyricisation of sickness; his utterances are pithy, dominated by sarcasm and even physiological brutality, and the style of his description of corporeality employs grotesqueness, irony and absurdity. Human subjectivity sensed through the body paints a picture of a fragmentary, disharmonious self; people reveal themselves to the eyes of others not as a whole, but as an abbreviation, a representative detail. Visions of mechanised bodies, whose behaviour and actions are hyperbolised by the musician, bring us - especially during the last years of Chopin’s life - into a world where corporeality is a source of strangeness, and even repugnance. In the conclusion of the article, the author denies that Chopin’s music can be directly translated into a moving picture: she states that neither his illness nor any other experiences of his bodily existence can be treated in an illustrative way that purports to “illuminate” his music directly.

4

Nad rzekami Stanislava Kostki Neumanna i Oty Pavla

100%

Sosnowska D.

Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo

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2015

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issue 5(8)

507-520

EN

This article concerns two visions of rivers in chosen texts by Stanislav Kostka Neumann and Ota Pavel. Rivers do not constitute merely a countryside element for the authors; to both of them they have become an inspiration to comment on the Czech culture, human nature and the relation between a human being and the natural environment. The problem of how a human being treats the universe where he belongs, is examined by the author of the article in the context of environmental ethics, especially the philosophy of nature by Albert Schweitzer, who is considered to be the founder of environmentalism. This famous Alsatian thinker, doctor, musician, who obtained the Nobel Prize after the WW II, did not idealize nature, but claimed that it is a human being who introduces a moral reflection into the natural world. At the same time, he perceived a person not to be superior, but equal to other creatures, as all of them share the mystery of death, however only a human being is able to make it the basis for solidarity and sympathy.

5

Wpływ kulturowy jako tradycja i wyzwanie dla czeskiej, ukraińskiej i polskiej komparatystyki

100%

Sosnowska D.

Porównania

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2012

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vol. 10

147-160

EN

The article deals with ideas of cultural influence which were formulated by Czech, Ukrainian and Polish intellectuals before the second world war. Presented examples of Slavic approach to the problem of cultural domination and inferiority as well as the cultural influence in general, could be seen today as a valuable tradition for comparative studies in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. In contrary to the assumption of the existence of a cultural center and province which separated Western and Eastern Europe, which was such a popular belief in the Western comparative studies up to the late 1950s, as well as its supposition of cultural hierarchy which distinguished mature active, and influential cultures from those which are passive, imitative, only at one of many stages of its development, Slavonic intellectuals thought in a different way about the problem. They saw the process of cultural influence as a more dynamic, creative and complex phenomenon. They also stressed that not only an imitation effort took part in the pursuit of Slavic cultures after more developed Western European cultures, but also an adaptation and modification of all imitated cultural fashions and trends. As a result something new and original emerged on the grounds of Slavic culture. Therefore, their culture did not lose its original character and it should not be treated as a passive reflection of the Western European cultures. The author reminds about those concepts, which were ahead of their times and only today they can be truly appreciated in the context of post-structural changes in the humanities. The author emphasizes also that the approach to the problem of cultural influence played a different role in the development of Czech, Ukrainian and Polish comparative studies referring to the cultural and political challenges created by it.

PL

W artykule przedstawiono koncepcje wpływu kulturowego sformułowane przez czeskich, ukraińskich i polskich intelektualistów przed drugą wojną światową. Przykłady słowiańskiego stosunku do kulturowej dominacji i podporządkowania, jak również do szerszych aspektów zjawiska wpływu kulturowego, mogą być traktowane jako wartościowa tradycja dla dzisiejszych studiów porównawczych skoncentrowanych na Europie ŚrodkowoWschodniej. W przeciwieństwie do założeń przyjmujących istnienie kulturowego centrum oraz prowincji, utożsamianych z rozróżnieniem Zachodniej oraz Wschodniej Europy (wraz z jej częścią Środkową), a to stanowisko zachowało popularność w komparatystyce zachodnioeuropejskiej do późnych lat 50. XX wieku, intelektualiści słowiańscy mieli inne podejście do wskazanego problemu. Nie godzili się z przeświadczeniem, że istnieje kulturowa hierarchia wyznaczająca sztywne relacje pomiędzy kulturami dojrzałymi, aktywnymi i wpływowymi oraz tymi, które sąpasywne, naśladowcze i znajdują się na etapie dopiero kulturowego rozwoju. Postrzegali oni proces kulturowego wpływu jako zjawisko bardziej złożone, dynamiczne i powiązane z kreatywnością. Badacze tacy jak O. Hostinský, J. Mukařowský, K. Čapek, M. Drahomanow, I. Franko podkreślali, że wpływ kulturowy nie polega na przyjmowaniu postawy biernego imitowania, na czym miałby polegać pościg kultur słowiańskich za kulturami Europy Zachodniej. Wręcz przeciwnie, w procesie tym istotną rolę grają czynniki adaptacji i modyfikacji przejmowanych trendów kulturowych, a w konsekwencji obce wpływy implantowane na własne podłoże kulturowe prowadzą do powstawania zjawisk nowych i zachowujących swą odrębność. Wpływ kulturowy płynąc z Europy Zachodniej nie musi prowadzić do utraty oryginalności przez kultury rodzime (w tym przypadku trzy wymienione kultury słowiańskie: czeską, ukraińską i polską), a tam, gdzie dostrzegamy jego działanie, kultury wpływowi podległe nie powinny być automatycznie traktowane jako lustrzane odbicia kultur wpływających. Autorka, przypominając koncepcje wspomnianych badaczy, które wyprzedzały stan ówczesnej świadomości komparatystycznej, podkreśla, że mogą być one w pełni docenione w kontekście zmian w humanistyce wynikłych z kryzysu strukturalizmu. Zarazem autorka zwraca uwagę, że podejście do problemu wpływu kulturowego odegrało różną rolę w rozwoju czeskich, ukraińskich i polskich studiów porównawczych w zależności od kulturowych oraz politycznych wyzwań, jakie zjawisko wpływustwarzało w każdej z trzech społeczności.

6

Svatý Jan pod Skalou: The Sacred Place and Conflicted Traditions

100%

Sosnowska D.

Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo

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2019

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issue 9(12) cz.1

97-110

EN

The author explores the ideologization of human space on the example of the place known as Saint John under the Rock in Czechia. This place has a long and rich tradition, also written one, and is tightly bound with Czech identity, not only local but also national. The oldest mentions about the place appear in medieval manuscripts that describe it as one of the most mysterious and sacred. Religious tradition connected with the place serves as an example of the diversity of Czech approaches to faith. For the history of the place was extremely turbulent and its owners usually used it as a tool of cultural appropriation and ideological interest, Saint John under the Rock proves how desired traditions were shaped. To discuss Czech tradition, the author employs the metaphor of “geological layers.” Although all the layers − the Christian, the secular, and even the communist tradition − compose Czech identity, their interpreters analyze them in separation. They detach the layer of tradition that does not fit their perspective. Hence, the place under analysis reveals a battle for identities that aims to establish the dominant layer of tradition. In this article, I seek to unveil the game of contradicting narratives to show how a place so deeply plunged in Czech tradition is abused to represent only a part of the “right” tradition.

7

Milczące cmentarze Pragi

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Sosnowska D.

Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo

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2012

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issue 2(5)

127-143

EN

The article discusses the semiotics of Prague cemeteries as well as their role in Czech culture against the backdrop of the cultural role of cemeteries in Central Europe. Prague cemeteries are silent as their presence in the memory and life of Czechs is much less noticeable than one would have assumed it should be as resulting from the 19th century patriotic concepts which accompanied the establishment of national cemetery, the magnifi cence of funeral ceremonies of the time and the signifi cance of necropolises cultural heritage. The Czech way of commemorating the dead personages of cultural merit is naming after them public institutions rather than visiting the graveyard and perceiving thecemetery as an institution of memorialising national history. The refl ection on the cultural role of Prague cemeteries is more often present in Czech literary works than in scientific studies on Czech culture. This peculiar indifference is characteritic of Czech mentality, even though the determining factors to create Prague cemetery did not distinguish Czechs from the nations of Central Europe – national revival and national mythology together with the change in perceiving the cemetery in the urban organism.

8

Wielokulturowość Galicji jako wyzwanie i zadanie komparatysty

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Sosnowska D.

Rocznik Komparatystyczny

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2011

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vol. 2

p. 65-78

EN

The subject of the multiculturalism of Galicia seems exhausted and subsequent attempts at describing it may lead to trivial conclusions. However, a few blank spaces still remain to be filled. The author considers how the images of nations populating Galicia collided. Polish Galicia (mythical and literary) is rooted in our consciousness; we do not know, however, the notions, poetics and rhetorical figures employed by other nations. From this perspective, the apparently well-known multiculturalism of Galicia proves a loose bundle of contradictory narrations. The coexistence of multiple cultures and nations was bound to cause the isolation of individual communities. The author scrutinises two nations, Polish and Ukrainian, between which there was cultural and political rivalry brought about by a sudden increase of well-educated people on both sides. Hence two types of discourse are presented in the article, in which the two nations learned about one other and decided upon which employed rhetoric was unwelcome and therefore excluded. Those discourses were created regardless of nationalist ideas; they were an emanation of “collective power” (as understood by Wilhelm Dilthey), an energy which had to be channelled into properly formulated senses and images. The article analyses texts which are results of those discourses; the discourses may prove contradictory within one culture. The author confronts the patriotic novel for youngsters, Dzieci Lwowa (Children of Lviv) by Helena Zakrzewska, which retains the image of an “ugly robber”, with diaries of women engaged in military actions in eastern Galicia (1918–1919). In their reports the figure of the barbarian Ukrainian is reversed – it was Ukrainian soldiers, not Austrian, who showed mercy and respect and who withheld fire when a lady might have been wounded. Even divided and antagonised worlds are susceptible to processes of exchange, influence and diffusion, therefore their discourses should not be analysed separately. It transpires that one issue, already exploited in one culture, may play a new role in another. And this particular aspect of the multiculturalism of Galicia turns out to be an unaccomplished task.

9

Świat duchowy Josefa Váchala w pryzmacie roku 1920

100%

Sosnowska D.

Slavia Meridionalis

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2020

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vol. 20

PL

Artykuł prezentuje duchowe poszukiwania jednego z najbardziej oryginalnych czeskich artystów XX wieku. Materiałem interpretacyjnym są zarówno teksty literackie autora, jak i jego prace plastyczne. W pierwszej części tekstu przedstawiono ogólny zarys poglądów autora na sprawy Boga, Szatana, katolicyzmu, Kościoła, natury, okultyzmu, mistyki. Podkreślono radykalne zwroty światopoglądu Váchala, a także aporie i niekonsekwencje jego przekonań. Ważnym wątkiem w tej części tekstu jest ukazanie związków spirytualnych wierzeń i lęków Váchala z krytyką współczesnej cywilizacji. W drugiej części artykułu uwaga autora skupiła się na jednym roku z życia artysty. Powstałe w 1920 dzieła plastyczne i literackie tworzone były z niezwykłą intensywnością i w ogromnym napięciu moralnym wynikłym z nawiązania pozamałżeńskiego związku z kochanką. Nie obniżyło to ich literackiej i malarskiej jakości. Poza przybliżeniem czytelnikowi tych niezwykłych dzieł druga część artykułu poddaje szczegółowej analizie postawę Váchala jako krytyka „nowoczesnego” człowieka: bezmyślnego i destrukcyjnego wobec natury, okrutnego wobec zwierząt. Prezentuje też kontrkulturowy projekt artysty związany z ideą Księgi jako czytelniczego labiryntu, przemierzanego powoli, z pokorą i wysiłkiem, na przekór cywilizacji rządzonej przez bożka pośpiechu.

EN

The article presents the spiritual search of one of the most original Czech artists of the 20th century. The first part of the text presents a general outline of the author’s views on the matters of God, Satan, Catholicism, the Church, Nature, Occultism, and Mysticism. The radical changes in Váchal’s worldview and the aporias of his concepts are emphasized. An important thread in this part of the text is to show the spiritual connections between Váchal’s beliefs and fears on the one hand and criticism of contemporary civilization on the other. In the second part of the article, the author’s attention was focused on one year of the artist’s life. The art and literary works produced in 1920 were created with unusual intensity and in great moral tension resulting from the fact that he had started an extramarital relationship, but this did not diminish their quality. Apart from introducing the reader to these extraordinary works, the second part of the article examines in detail Váchal’s attitude as a critic of ‘modern’ man: thoughtless and destructive towards nature, cruel towards animals. It also presents the artist’s countercultural project related to the idea of the Book as a literary labyrinth that should be traversed slowly with humility and effort, in spite of the endless rush of modern culture.

10

Lekkość śmiechu i ciężar grozy, czyli wyprawa w świat czeskich strachów

75%

Sosnowska D.

Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne

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2015

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issue 8

431-436

11

Między wysoką i niską kulturą, czyli batalia o trywialność

75%

Sosnowska D.

Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne

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2013

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issue 5

343-348

12

Od Redakcji

63%

Drzewiecka E., Sosnowska D.

Slavia Meridionalis

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2020

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vol. 20

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Pośród rozkoszy i zdziecinnienia. O dystopii Jana Weissa „Mullerdom ma tysiąc pięter”

Kołowrót religijnych symboli: od Hrabala do czeskiej prozy lat 90. XX wieku. Przypadek „Mefitis” Martina Komárka

Fryderyk Chopin’s correspondence from the perspective of body studies. The discovery of corporeality

Nad rzekami Stanislava Kostki Neumanna i Oty Pavla

Wpływ kulturowy jako tradycja i wyzwanie dla czeskiej, ukraińskiej i polskiej komparatystyki

Svatý Jan pod Skalou: The Sacred Place and Conflicted Traditions

Milczące cmentarze Pragi

Wielokulturowość Galicji jako wyzwanie i zadanie komparatysty

Świat duchowy Josefa Váchala w pryzmacie roku 1920

Lekkość śmiechu i ciężar grozy, czyli wyprawa w świat czeskich strachów

Między wysoką i niską kulturą, czyli batalia o trywialność

Od Redakcji