The article is an analysis of the image of ruins of Warsaw in Polish feature films after World War II. There is a strong tendency to connect this image with the current political (and psychological) situation, from the enthusiasm of rebuilding Warsaw just after the war to the depressive moods of the late fifties and sixties. The ruins of the city are depicted as a symbol of political and social changes in Poland in this article.
This paper describes and assesses Richard Haag’s controversial campaign to create Seattle’s Gas Works Park. Haag’s plan is significant in the history of environmental aesthetics, because it was the first to preserve remnants of industrial heritage in a United States city park, and because Haag appealed to aesthetics when making his case. I argue Haag’s campaign was persuasive, and I claim the former gas works now function within the park in much the same way as the ruins of parks of previous centuries. And because the structures are now ruins, they do not sanctify the destructive function they used to have. Finally, I claim that human intervention in abandoned, derelict, or post-industrial sites can be worthwhile if it successfully conveys a change in use or function of those sites, thus bringing beauty out of blight.
This paper is a contribution to the contemporary discussions around architectural materialities and the history of the immediate post-war period in the urban areas of Europe. The opening paragraphs include references to the artistic action The Cut which took place in 2015, exposed the anthropogenic strata in Warsaw’s landscape and acknowledged the continuous material existence of the city’s history within its soil. Focusing on rubble, debris and post-war architectural waste, the author presents the theoretical approach by referring to a broad shift in the humanities towards approaches oriented towards objects and particular materialities. The subsequent historical narrative centres on the problems of rubble clearing and utilisation in the early reconstruction period of Warsaw. It shows the views and operations aimed at the removal of the mass of rubble proposed by the architects from the Bureau for the Capital City Reconstruction (BOS) and the inhabitants returning to the ruined city in 1945. Mobilising both narratives, the paper presents problems and discussions related to rubble utilisation and removal. Referring to Maciej Nowicki’s unrealised design for Warsaw’s city centre and contrasting it with the oral testimonies of the city’s inhabitants, the article reveals the struggles and discussions that raged during that early stage of city reconstruction. Finally, through the use of various sources from geological mapping to archival materials, the paper aims to locate, describe and document the rubble landscapes located around the city of Warsaw. In the conclusion the author points out how the subject could be expanded and how rubble relates to contemporary discourses in the humanities.
The main question of the essay is: do ruins need a new definition? Ruins are not only destroyed architecture, but also everything that has been associated with it in the process of life. From the perspective of the question, the concept of ruins should be understood much broader than just architecturally, and they should be assigned not to the past but to the present, or rather between past and present. If we consider ruins from the standpoint which situates them between culture and nature, there opens up another opportunity: here ruins are found on the juncture of nature and culture, becoming a natureculture hybrid. Here, degradation encompasses the cultural sense in the first place and the expectations it involves, but not from the perspective of nature. The order of nature translates into a new “life” of the ruin, which is attributed a new functionality, subordinated to other – non-anthropocentric – goals and values. Concluding, ruins require a new approach and a new definition that does not condemn them to degradation, but sees hope in the revitalizing forces of nature that ensure for them a new status and a different ontological significance.
In this paper we analyze three places extensively used by the Soviets in Poland during the Cold War: Brzeźnica-Kolonia, Kłomino and Borne Sulinowo. We treat these places and artefacts found there as heritage. However, instead of calling for their urgent preservation, we try to argue that heritage does not need to be perceived as a dead past. Material culture and material transformations in landscapes of the recent past last and survive their own times. The goal of this paper is to pay archaeological attention to the duration of the things and landscapes from the recent past in the present.
This essay aims to bring to the fore the varied and broad valences of the ‘mound’ in Beckett’s oeuvre. In my reading, the mound functions as a profuse, multi-purpose symbol, that coalesces into a variety of topoi indicative of Mother Earth, that figure in the thighs, the nipples, the pubis/pubic area and bones, ruins, ants, birth, fetus, and elemental maternal death. I embarked upon the present study before the commencement of the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project, a collaborative project between the Centre for Manuscript Genetics at the University of Antwerp, the Beckett International Foundation, the University of Reading and Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin. Valorising the author’s editing, additions, notes and comments provided by the upcoming digitalized manuscripts of Beckett in 2014 and 2015, I expect to contribute to the work in progress, and to the corpus of Beckett studies in general, especially those approaching his bilingual works. It is my contention that the frequency of certain terms, the diagrams that Beckett included in some of his letters (as is the case of the mound in Happy Days), shed significant light on the nature of his symbolism.
Comparative studies have established that Cyprian Norwid knew about Friedrich Creuzer’s famous work on the symbol and mythology. He must at least have read its first volume, particularly the theoretical part (albeit in a French translation). Reading Creuzer aided him in reinterpreting his own concept of the symbol, presented in his early theoretical writings. His point of departure were Creuzer’s remarks about “mystical” and “divine” symbols. Norwid’s reinterpretation did not remain without consequences for his poetry. Recently several Norwid scholars have drawn attention to a fresh interpretative context: the concept of allegory elaborated by Walter Benjamin. They considered the context to be related to Benjamin’s and Norwid’s perception of the modern city (Paris from the “Passagenwerk”) and also to the motive of ruins. Benjamin presented his concept of the allegory in his famous book Origin of German Tragic Drama. He developed it on the basis of the same considerations about the symbol (focusing in a “totalizing” and “necessary” way on the “mystical now”) and allegory as Norwid once did. Here their paths converge. A precondition, however, for understanding Benjamin’s remarks about the symbol is his PhD thesis The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism that devotes much attention to reflexivity in the oeuvre of Novalis and Fr. Schlegel.This “Romanticism of Jena” and its philosophy of consciousness had also impact on Norwid (though mediated by Mickiewicz’s “Parisian Lectures”). Comparing Norwid and Benjamin in these contexts contributes to defining their (differing) attitude towards the temporality of Being and the Holy.
In Mercier’s futuristic novel published in 1771, the author’s alter ego wakes up one day as a sevenhundred-year-old man and he rediscovers the city of Paris in the company of a citizen of the 25th century. Memory and forgetting can be interpreted in different ways in the novel: on the one hand, we can see how the elderly man remembers his own time, what memories he keeps from the 18th century, and also how the people of this new Paris are kept in the memory of future generations. On the other hand, we will examine the author’s point of view, especially the influence of the philosophers of his time. During Mercier’s meditations on the tombs and ruins, it is mainly the impact of Diderot’s thoughts that dominates, and these passages show that the notions of memory and forgetting are closely related to those of imagination and dream.
The main part of this study is preceded by information on the subject of dynamically increasing, since the beginning of the 18th century, participation of Polish women from wealthy houses in social life. It can be confirmed by, among others, their travels abroad to e.g. Italy with its rich resources in the form of works of art including those preserved from ancient times being of great interest then. In the main stream of investigation the author focuses on the preserved French travel journal (“Mes voyages”) of the journey that Waleria from the Stroynowskis Tarnowska undertook to Italy in years 1803–1804 with her husband Jan Feliks and her father Walerian. The analytical and interpretational considerations refer to the fragments concerning the buildings observed by the countess during her Italian journey, which were to a various degree damaged by the power of time or human activity and that was indicated by singled out synonymous terms used for ruins. The crucial aspect of this reflection is concretisation of Tarnowska’s impressions depicted in descriptions from close contact with antique and modern edifices, not too rarely preserved in a remnant form. According to the author of this study references to and descriptions of ruins in the analysed journal are the expression of not a genuine passion but rather of the influence of contemporary fashion for ancient times and great curiosity for the world during the first journey abroad and the will to see and then record in writing all that was required to see during this Italian trip. They also prove psychologically conditioned perception of wors of art.
PL
Zasadniczą partię rozprawy poprzedzają informacje na temat dynamicznie wzrastającego od XVIII wieku udziału w życiu społecznym Polek z zamożnych domów, czego przejawem były także ich zagraniczne wojaże, prowadzące m.in. do Italii z przebogatymi zasobami dzieł sztuki, w tym również zachowanych starożytności cieszących się ówcześnie powszechnym zainteresowaniem. W głównym toku dociekań autorka skupia się na zachowanym w rękopisie francuskim dzienniku podróży (Mes voyages), którą Waleria ze Stroynowskich Tarnowska odbyła do Włoch w latach 1803–1804 wraz z mężem Janem Feliksem i ojcem Walerianem. Analityczno-interpretacyjne rozważaniach obejmują fragmenty relacji dotyczące obserwowanych przez hrabinę w trakcie włoskiego wojażu budowli w różnym stopniu zniszczonych siłą czasu lub wskutek działalności człowieka, na co wskazują wyodrębnione synonimiczne określenia ruin. Istotnym aspektem dociekań jest konkretyzacja utrwalonych w deskrypcjach wrażeń, jakich Tarnowskiej dostarczał w Italii bliski kontakt z antycznymi i nowożytnymi gmachami, nierzadko zachowanymi w formie szczątkowej. Według autorki rozprawy, przywołania i deskrypcje ruin analizowanym dzienniku są wyrazem nie tyle autentycznej pasji, ile raczej oddziaływania ówczesnej mody na starożytności oraz wielkiej ciekawości świata w czasie pierwszej podróży zagranicznej i chęci obejrzenia, a następnie utrwalenia w zapisach tego wszystkiego, co w czasie włoskiego wojażu należało zobaczyć. Świadczą również o uwarunkowanym psychologicznie odbiorze dzieł sztuki.
The article presents the current situation of some selected modernist heritage architectural objects in the city of Katowice, or rather their ruins. The author discusses their phantom-like status, describes some local artistic interventions to highlight their plight and points out their potential to create a sphere of aesthetic autonomy in the citizens’ daily life.
PL
Artykuł podejmuje zagadnienie specyficznego statusu obiektów modernistycznego dziedzictwa architektonicznego w rejonie współczesnych Katowic. Autor prezentuje, skoncentrowane na tych budynkach i zespołach architektonicznych, zabiegi podejmowane przez lokalnych artystów oraz podejmuje próbę analizy ich potencjału w zakresie wytworzenia strefy estetycznej autonomii w obszarze życia codziennego mieszkańców miasta.
W artykule przedstawiono nowe spojrzenie na problem konfrontowania się Żydów z poholocaustowymi Niemcami i Polską. Jest to spojrzenie z perspektywy emocji wyrażanych przez Żydów podróżujących do tych krajów od lat czterdziestych XX wieku do dziś. Artykuł stanowi więc swoisty montaż nakładających się uczuć Żydów do odwiedzanych regionów. Celem tekstu jest udowodnienie, że Niemcy i Polska to dla Żydów nie tylko „krajobraz ruin”, ale przestrzeń krzyżowania się wielu skomplikowanych emocji.
EN
This essay explores from a new perspective the intricate ways in which Jews have encountered and engaged with Germany and Poland after the Holocaust. It looks at the emotions expressed by Jews who travelled to both countries from roughly the late 1940s to the present moment in an attempt to build a textual montage of the juxtaposing feelings that Jews have had towards the region. In so doing, it attempts to show that Germany and Poland have represented for Jews not only a “ruined landscape” of death, but an emotionally complex space in which a wide range of emotional reactions have intersected.
The idea of the university was never a significant context for researchers of Franz Kafka work. It was the other social institutions that became the natural source of allusive recognition of literary scholars (court, insurance company, imperial state office). In this sketch – written on the margins of Kafka’s famous short story: Report for the Academy – we are trying to change it. The university (title: Academy) here becomes a “central object of criticism”, an institution in ruins, a place where one does not practice research and does not perfect humanistic virtues. On the contrary, it is a space where the “gate of perception” and „critical thinking” are consistently closed – as a tribute to the particular game of interests. In the worst case – the effect of the Academy’s impact becomes destruction resulting from training and humiliation.
PL
Idea uniwersytetu nigdy nie stanowiła znaczącego kontekstu dla badań twórczości Franza Kafki. To inne instytucje społeczne stawały się naturalnym polem aluzyjnych rozpoznań literaturoznawców (sąd, zakład ubezpieczeń, cesarski urząd państwowy). W niniejszym szkicu (napisanym na marginesie słynnego opowiadania Kafki Raport dla Akademii) próbujemy to zmienić. Uniwersytet (tytułowa Akademia) staje się „centralnym obiektem krytyki”, instytucją w ruinie, miejscem, gdzie nie praktykuje się badań i nie doskonali humanistycznych cnót. Wręcz przeciwnie, jakże często (konsekwentnie) zamyka się tu „wrota percepcji” i wysadza śluzy „krytycznego myślenia” – w hołdzie partykularnej grze interesów. W najgorszym przypadku – skutkiem oddziaływania tak pomyślanej Akademii staje się destrukcja wynikła z aktów tresury i upokorzenia.
Muranów, or about land clearing The article is a review of “Festung Warschau” by Elżbieta Janicka which maps the clash between the recently built monuments celebrating Jewish or Polish places of martyrdom from the times of Second World War. Janicka walks through the streets of the former Jewish neighbourhoods of Warsaw; she photographs and discusses the new plaques, crosses, monuments, and other forms of public marking of history on the buildings, squares and streets. She convincingly shows that the new historical commemorative signs of Polish martyrdom are often placed in the sites that were marked by Jewish resistance or suffering, and that the marks of Polish suffering are rarely linked materially to the site. The new monuments obstruct and hide the past presence of Warsaw Jews and, by submerging their past, create a new vision of ethnically cleansed history of Warsaw, especially in its relation to Second World War. The review applauds the book and rejects some of the criticism against it.
The article aims at considering Central Europe and appreciating it in connection with the category of the South. This means the change from the horizontal, parallel paradigm, which imposes the necessity of defining Central Europe by reference to the East and West, to the vertical, meridian paradigm, enabling the creation of the myth of Central Europe, where the main reference point are the Balkan nations. A look at the South as a counterpoint to the opposition East – West has its antecedents in the 30s of the 20th century. In the Polish prose created after 1989, especially in the works of Andrzej Stasiuk, it is possible to specify the elements of the myth of the South as the basis of the myth of Central Europe, such as: themes of Austria-Hungary, the idea of civilization of the Danube, the creation of the Gypsies as cultural heroes and the specifically transformed topos of the “poetry of ruins”.
PL
Artykuł dotyczy prób myślenia o Europie Środkowej i dowartościowania jej w związku z kategorią Południa, czyli zmianą horyzontalnego, równoleżnikowego paradygmatu, narzucającego konieczność definiowania Europy Środkowej przez odniesienie do Wschodu i Zachodu, na paradygmat wertykalny, południkowy, umożliwiający stworzenie mitu środkowoeuropejskiego, w którym głównym punktem odniesienia są nacje bałkańskie. Spojrzenie na Południe jako na kontrapunkt dla opozycji Wschód – Zachód ma swoje antecedencje w latach 30. XX w. W prozie polskiej powstałej po 1989 r., zwłaszcza utworach Andrzeja Stasiuka, można wskazać elementy mitu Południa jako podstawy mitu Europy Środkowej, takie jak: motywy cekańskie, idea cywilizacji naddunajskiej, kreacja Cyganów na bohaterów kulturowych i specyficznie przekształcony topos „poezji ruin”.
For many centuries, scientists, philosophers, artists and others have been fascinated with ruins. However, this fascination usually focused upon ancient and medieval relics. Indeed, it can be metaphorically said that archaeology was built upon ruins. Nonetheless, the archaeological analyses of ruins, their functions, meanings, uses and re-uses over the next centuries had been very selective. In short, modern ruins have been out of closer archaeological attention. It seems as if modern ruins were deprived of social, cultural, and archaeological dimensions. However, this changed during the first decade of the 21st century when archaeologists started to pay attention to the modern ruins. The so-called archaeology of (modern) ruins is one of the most interesting, provocative, and subversive fields of the contemporary archaeological discourses. The starting point of this paper is that there is no “ontological difference” between the Greek, the Roman and the Soviet ruins. All of them can and should be part of archaeological thinking. A two-step approach is applied here. First, the archaeological value of ruins in Chernobyl is discussed. A documentary entitled Czarnobyl – Wstęp Wzbroniony (2015) (Eng. Chernobyl – No Entry) is reviewed to highlight the processes of transformation of the unimaginable nuclear catastrophe into valuable heritage of the recent past. It is argued that Chernobyl can be seen as “Pompeii of our times”. Second, the review of Czarnobyl – Wstęp Wzbroniony is used as a pretext to shortly present different categories of modern ruins that one can encounter in contemporary Poland. Many of them are related with the Soviet occupation in Poland between 1945 and 1993. The point that I try to back up in this paper is that these Soviet ruins are also part of the archaeological heritage of the recent past. Accordingly, this paper is a call for a closer archaeological interest in the ruins of the recent past in general.
The aim of this article is the delimitation and semantic analysis of language units represented in the contemporary Polish language by the forms ruina (a ruin), ruiny (ruins), rujnować (to ruin). The text is situated in the steam of structuralist linguistics, and more specifically in reduction semantics. The outcome of the conducted analysis is the identification of both verbal units in the form of [ktoś] zrujnował [kogoś], [ktoś] zrujnował się na [coś], [ktoś] zrujnował [coś], [ktoś] obrócił [coś] w ruinę and nominal units in the form of ruiny [czegoś], as well as three expressions associated with the form ruina, namely the specific noun ruina and the abstract nouns ruina [kogoś] and ruina [czegoś]. The author describes the semantic propertied of the distinguished lexemes and formulates an explication of the notions assigned to them.
PL
Celem artykułu jest delimitacja i analiza semantyczna jednostek języka reprezentowanych we współczesnej polszczyźnie przez kształty ruina, ruiny, rujnować. Tekst sytuuje się w nurcie językoznawstwa strukturalistycznego, a dokładnie w obrębie semantyki redukcyjnej. Rezultatem przeprowadzonej analizy jest wyodrębnienie jednostek zarówno czasownikowych o kształcie [ktośi] zrujnował [kogośj], [ktośi] zrujnował się na [cośj], [ktośi] zrujnował [cośj], [ktośi] obrócił [cośj] w ruinę, jak i rzeczownikowych o kształcie ruiny [czegośi], a także trzech wyrażeń związanych z postacią ruina, a mianowicie rzeczownik konkretny – ruina oraz rzeczowniki abstrakcyjne - ruina [kogośj] i ruina [czegośj] Autorka opisuje właściwości semantyczne wyróżnionych leksemów oraz formułuje eksplikacje pojęć do nich przyporządkowanych.
The article attempts at explaining the motif of the eagle which appears in the final Song XIV in the poem Rzecz o wolności słowa. Previous scholars have unambiguously associated this symbolic vision with the apocalypse and with the figure of St John. The reading of Volney’s Travels through Syria and Egypt, supported by the source description of Palmyra’s ruins from Robert Wood’s The Ruines of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmor, in the Desert (1753), points rather to an archaeological source of Norwid’s imagery – the image of the ruins of the Palmyrene Temple of the Sun (Baal).
Tekst jest propozycją spojrzenia na Hashimę jako na wyspę, która generuje podwójne pęknięcie: jest to pęknięcie na pejzażu morskim oraz skaza, którą stanowi sama wyspa-ruina. Refleksja bierze pod uwagę uwarunkowanie historyczne wyspy, czas jej rozwoju oraz teraźniejszość miasta ruin. Szybkie wysiedlenie i pozostawienie na niszczenie olbrzymich budynków oraz „osieroconych” przedmiotów codziennego użytku, skazuje to miejsce na znikanie. Przeciwdziałają temu działania twórcze, w których artyści starają się upominać o przeszłość i teraźniejszość Hashimy, wykorzystując ruiny jako element dyskursu pamięci, śladu, znikania i uobecniania byłych mieszkańców. Skumulowane obrazy, toposy przenoszone przez twórców, utrwalane na medialnych nośnikach, wyraźnie wskazują na potrzebę rozprawienia się z tą przestrzenią pustki i ruiny, oraz swego rodzaju balsamowania czasów minionych.
EN
The premise of the text is to look at Hashima as an island that generates a double crack. It is both a crack in the seascape and an imperfection which the island-ruin constitutes in itself. The reflection takes into account historical conditions of the island, the time of its development, and the contemporaneity of the city of ruins. Abandonment of huge buildings and “orphaned” everyday objects, as well as rapid displacement of the island’s inhabitants, condemned the place to disappearance. This is countered by creative activities in which artists try to call for Hashima’s past and present, using the ruins as part of the discourse of memory, trace, disappearance, and re-presentation of former inhabitants. Accumulated images, tropes actualized by artists and perpetuated in media clearly indicate the need to deal with this space of emptiness, ruins, and specific embalming of bygone times.
Nowa książka norweskiego archeologa Bjørnara Olsena W obronie rzeczy stanowi próbę przełamania antropocentrycznego paradygmatu dominującego we współczesnej humanistyce. Swoją tematyką świetnie wpisuje się w prężnie rozwijające się w Polsce badania nad przedmiotami oraz ich (nie)obecnością w historii, archeologii i literaturze (tzw. zwrot ku rzeczom). W artykule nakreślono sieć powiązań między teorią archeologii symetrycznej Olsena a koncepcjami humanistyki nie-antropocentrycznej, rozwijanymi m.in. przez Ewę Domańską. Przywołano również próby praktycznego, interdyscyplinarnego wykorzystania przedmiotów w badaniach naukowych zarówno samego Olsena (w ramach „Ruin Memory Project”), jak i tłumaczki tomu Bożeny Shallcross. Pokrótce omówiono dotychczasową recepcję książki w Polsce.
EN
In his new book In Defense of Things, Norwegian archaeologist Bjørnar Olsen attempts at transgressing the anthropocentric paradigm, still present in modern humanities. Such an approach greatly corresponds with historical, archaeological and literary research on the (in)visibility of material objects, which has been recently gaining popularity amongst Polish scholars (so called turn to things). This review points out to the connection between Olsen’s theory of symmetrical archaeology and the concept of non-anthropocentric humanities, developed by i.a.: Ewa Domańska. It also discusses Olsen’s own efforts to put this interdisciplinary scientific use of objects to practice (as a part of his “Ruin Memory Project”) and compares them to a similar study conducted by his Polish translator Bożena Shallcross. The brief account on reception of the book in Poland is also included.
Artykuł przynosi próbę wyjaśnienia motywu orła, który pojawia się w finalnej XIV pieśni poematu Rzeczy o wolności słowa. Dotąd w literaturze przedmiotu tę symboliczną wizję łączono jednoznacznie z apokalipsą oraz z postacią św. Jana. Lektura Volney’owskiej Podróży do Syrii i Egiptu, wspartej źródłowym dla niej opisem ruin Palmiry z dzieła Roberta Wooda The Ruines of Palmyra otherwise Tedmor in the Desert (1753), wskazuje raczej na archeologiczne źródło Norwidowskiego obrazowania: obraz ruin palmireńskiej Świątyni Słońca (Baala).
EN
The article attempts at explaining the motif of the eagle which appears in the final Song XIV in the poem Rzecz o wolności słowa. Previous scholars have unambiguously associated this symbolic vision with the apocalypse and with the figure of St John. The reading of Volney’s Travels through Syria and Egypt, supported by the source description of Palmyra’s ruins from Robert Wood’s The Ruines of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmor, in the Desert (1753), points rather to an archaeological source of Norwid’s imagery – the image of the ruins of the Palmyrene Temple of the Sun (Baal).
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