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1

Jaki Norwid? Jaki romantyzm? Krytycznie o norwidologii adorującej

100%

Kasperski E.

Świat Tekstów. Rocznik Słupski

|

2008

|

vol. 6

199-215

2

Pseudo-Norwid, czyli co się komu podoba

100%

Kasperski E.

Studia Norwidiana

|

2014

|

vol. 32

290-325

EN

The present text critically discusses Wiesław Rzońca’s book Premodernizm Norwida – na tle symbolizmu literackiego drugiej połowy XIX wieku (Norwid’s Pre-modernism – Against the Background of the Literary Symbolism of the Second Half of the 19th Century) (Warszawa 2013). In the subsequent chapters the present polemics formulates the following charges against the book: 1). The division of Norwid’s work into “the mature period” and “the imma ture one” is unjustified and devoid of factual foundations; especially when in the allegedly “immature” period (until 1857) a lot of the poet’s undoubted masterpieces were written, also, the work after 1857 continued the earlier forms, ideas and motifs, and in this sense it was characterized by a relative – dynamic, flexible and open to changes – continuity. 2). One of Rzońca’s theses – an exceptionally doubtful one – puts Norwid’s allegedly “mature” works after 1857 outside Romanticism, which differs from the truth, both textual and historicalliterary, because Norwid till the end of his life drew on the Romantic tradition and traces of this practice can be discovered in most of his writings and poems, starting from his lectures On Juliusz Słowacki putting Byron (and not Baudelaire!) in the position of “poets’ Socrates”, and ending with Rzecz o wolności słowa (On the Freedom of Speech), perfectly well analyzed in the past by the late Zofia Stefanowska with respect to the Romantic influences retained in the poem, and with Milczenie (Silence), Ad leones!, Stygmat (Stigma) and Tajemnica lorda Singleworth (Lord Singleworth’s Secret). 3). Rzońca’s false diagnoses concerning Norwid’s relation towards Romantics and Romanticism result from a) accepting an extraordinarily narrow, static and basically false conception of Romanticism, reducing it personally to Mickiewicz and Byron, and ignoring the German, English, French, American, or even Polish Romanticism that was intellectually rich and creative (“not-well-enough-read” Krasiński or Słowacki plus the interesting Polish nationalist philosophy), and on which the whole 19th century, not only Norwid drew; b) the false (and grotesque) assumption that since Norwid drew on the European Romantics ample heritage, he necessarily deserves the strict etiquette of a “Romantic”, and the period of 1848-1857 should be absolutely associated with his “immaturity”. 4). Rzońca’s flagship theses about Norwid’s “pre-modernism” does not meet the conditions of sense, for anything you like may be associated with the concepts of “pre-modernism” or “modernism” that are used in the book. 5). The above charge also concerns the thesis about Norwid’s alleged “modernist symbolism”, as this kind of symbolism appeared only after the death of the poet. 6). Hence if it is possible to ascribe some significant historical-literary discovery to Rzońca, it is probably only the one creating Norwid as a posthumous symbolist. 7). Rzońca’s self-appraisal saying that his book presents “an attempt at a synthesis of Norwid’s mature work” (p. 9) should be assessed not only as an attempt – in an arrogant language, which Rzońca does not hesitate to use towards Norwid – decidedly “immature”, but as an unintentional parody of a “synthesis”. This is because Premodernism is a collection of subjective, not thought through impressions that say a lot about their author and his ambitions, but not much about the real, historical Norwid. Hence the title of the review: Pseudo-Norwid.

3

Dyskurs antropologiczny. O antropologii literatury. Zasady pierwsze

100%

Kasperski E.

Świat Tekstów. Rocznik Słupski

|

2007

|

vol. 5

153-169

EN

Anthropological discourse defines the approach of its participants, i.e. human beings, to themselves, other human beings and the surroundings. It takes a collective dialogue form, its potential participant being each individual able to see, reflect upon things and communicate, and interested in one’s own existential and generic identity. Anthropological discourse has a long history. In the modern times the idea of getting to know the “man as a whole” appeared among the thinkers of the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Romanticism. In the second half of 19th century the positivist scientism and naturalist anthropology questioned the universalists’ apriorism and theological historicism of philosophical anthropology. The discourse on man became autonomous, diversified and specialised. One of the fields of the modern anthropological thought is the anthropology of literature. This term is used to describe all written discourses on man: religious, philosophical, political, scientific or colloquial. It can also be narrowed to denote the so called belles-lettres (artistic fiction). This article deals mainly with the contemporary issues on the anthropology of literature: its traditions, object, research aims, approach to poetics, literary history and theory. It particularly concerns the discourse on man in artistic fiction and its characteristic features. The author concludes that if this discourse is in various rela-tionships with other discourses on man (philosophical, theological, scientific or political), it often takes its own shape, conditioned by the language, means and forms of artistic expression and literary imagery. The category of man in literature is determined not only by the content of a given literary work but also by its formal properties (language, style, composition, genre, speaker, plot, construction of characters) as well as the very historical fact of coming into being, existing and functioning of artistic literature. This is why the article differentiates between the “literary anthropology”, communicating images of man through artistic means, and the anthropo-logy of literature, which uses scientific tools to examine in what way and through what means literature may form (express, shape, present, communicate) the world of man and what ideas, images, meanings and emotions are linked to this world.

4

Gotycyzm i śmiech. Groza, groteska i parodia u E.A. Poego

100%

Kasperski E.

Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo

|

2010

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vol. 59

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issue (3)

181-198

EN

There are long-standing critical opinions that Poe was a master of Gothic macabre tales implying the appreciation of extreme emotions, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, although he was, in fact, only one of the late heirs to the Gothic tradition. However, these opinions stood in contradiction to the fact that Poe was also an excellent humorist inspired by parody, grotesque, hoax and self-mockery. In contrast to the Gothic tradition, his macabre tales became often the hybrid mixture of comics and horror. Placing Poe’s arabesque and grotesque tales in the historical context, the article differentiates between three various literary strategies which define relationship of horror and comics: 1) the orthodox strategy oppressing and eliminating the laughter, 2) the strategy of the so called ‘satanic laughter’, which was practiced by Ch.R. Maturin in the novel Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) and described by Ch. Baudelaire in his essay De l’essence de rire, 3) the strategy of the laughter keeping distance from the horror and terror scenes and parodying them, e.g. in Poe’s tale How to write a Blackwood article. It is the thesis of the article that the third strategy was especially typical of E.A. Poe. In this respect American writer was a legal heir of the literary tradition represented by W. Shakespeare, F. Rabelais, M. Cervantes, J. Swift, Moliere, L. Sterne, Voltaire and D. Diderot.

5

Dyskursy romantyzmologii. Studium (samo)krytyczne

100%

Kasperski E.

Świat Tekstów. Rocznik Słupski

|

2010

|

issue 8

7-23

EN

The article investigates the critical and scientific discourses that have been functioning in the studies of Polish Romanticism for the period of the last 150 years. These discourses locate the center of almost any romantic problem, text or discourse predominantly within the intel-lectual and conceptual logos being constructed or accepted by critics and researchers. The secondary and tertiary literature have become so extensive and thorough that they almost fully cover original Romantic texts. In this way various methods of reading romantic literature and products of that reading are self-sufficient. They form an independent and primary object of the study. It is one of the paradoxes of our postmodern time that the original Romantic lite- rature step by step is losing its own identity and is taking one, which is being created by its readers.

6

Norwid jako strateg w kontekście rozważań o walce i wojnie

100%

Kasperski E.

Studia Norwidiana

|

2015

|

vol. 33

51-76

EN

Norwid’s deliberations about strategy were not a very well known but important and inventive current in his thought and literary work. In his concise essay La philosophie de la guerre, in the rhapsody Fulminant and in numerous poems, poetical digressions, remarks, notes and memorials the writer defined strategy as a domain of knowledge, a kind of art and a practical skill, necessary to reach long-range historical aims, and especially – in the particular situation of the partitions of Poland and in the face of the lost uprisings – to conduct an efficient struggle for independence, ending in a success. Opposing the long-term planning and strategic actions to a war, a battle, a skirmish and short-term plots – or in one word: to “bloody episodes, “convulsive straining”, futile martyrdom and fatalities, Norwid advocated a peaceful struggle carried on incessantly and consistently, a struggle that aimed at realizing positive human values, and not selfish goals. He thought that this kind of “struggle is a normal task of Humanity” and a universal law of history; whereas bloody war – is a license and an exception, acceptable only in the situation of a “just war”, in defense of universal values that were vio¬lated. According to this conception the writer contrasted the “soldier’s” attitude capable of he-roism first of all in everyday life and everyday work, with the “marauding soldier’s” one, taking one’s anger out on other people in aggression, violence; one greedy for blood and revenge. Hence in Norwid’s understanding it was the ability to predict and forestall events and to take precautionary measures in time that was the essence of strategy. He also connected successful strategy with working out and keeping to “a perfectly well conceived plan” that, owing to earlier preparations, concentrating the means in the right place and time, as well as to well thought out maneuvers, eliminated or reduced to a necessary minimum the use of physical force and violence towards the opponent. The basis of strategy was then formed by a long-range intellectual conception, and also by the ability to carry on struggle with various means, including also struggle “on the field of the idea” and “on the field of the word”.

7

Norwid jako strateg w kontekście rozważań o walce i wojnie

100%

Kasperski E.

Studia Norwidiana

|

2015

|

vol. 33

51-76

EN

Norwid’s deliberations about strategy were not a very well known but important and inventive current in his thought and literary work. In his concise essay La philosophie de la guerre, in the rhapsody Fulminant and in numerous poems, poetical digressions, remarks, notes and memorials the writer defined strategy as a domain of knowledge, a kind of art and a practical skill, necessary to reach long-range historical aims, and especially – in the particular situation of the partitions of Poland and in the face of the lost uprisings – to conduct an efficient struggle for independence, ending in a success. Opposing the long-term planning and strategic actions to a war, a battle, a skirmish and short-term plots – or in one word: to “bloody episodes, “convulsive straining”, futile martyrdom and fatalities, Norwid advocated a peaceful struggle carried on incessantly and consistently, a struggle that aimed at realizing positive human values, and not selfish goals. He thought that this kind of “struggle is a normal task of Humanity” and a universal law of history; whereas bloody war – is a license and an exception, acceptable only in the situation of a “just war”, in defense of universal values that were violated. According to this conception the writer contrasted the “soldier’s” attitude capable of he-roism first of all in everyday life and everyday work, with the “marauding soldier’s” one, taking one’s anger out on other people in aggression, violence; one greedy for blood and revenge. Hence in Norwid’s understanding it was the ability to predict and forestall events and to take precautionary measures in time that was the essence of strategy. He also connected successful strategy with working out and keeping to “a perfectly well conceived plan” that, owing to earlier preparations, concentrating the means in the right place and time, as well as to well thought out maneuvers, eliminated or reduced to a necessary minimum the use of physical force and violence towards the opponent. The basis of strategy was then formed by a long-range intellectual conception, and also by the ability to carry on struggle with various means, including also struggle “on the field of the idea” and “on the field of the word”.

8

Pseudo-Norwid, czyli co się komu podoba

100%

Kasperski E.

Studia Norwidiana

|

2014

|

vol. 32

290-325

EN

The present text critically discusses Wiesław Rzońca’s book Premodernizm Norwida – na tle symbolizmu literackiego drugiej połowy XIX wieku (Norwid’s Pre-modernism – Against the Background of the Literary Symbolism of the Second Half of the 19th Century) (Warszawa 2013). In the subsequent chapters the present polemics formulates the following charges against the book: 1). The division of Norwid’s work into “the mature period” and “the imma ture one” is unjustified and devoid of factual foundations; especially when in the allegedly “immature” period (until 1857) a lot of the poet’s undoubted masterpieces were written, also, the work after 1857 continued the earlier forms, ideas and motifs, and in this sense it was characterized by a relative – dynamic, flexible and open to changes – continuity. 2). One of Rzońca’s theses – an exceptionally doubtful one – puts Norwid’s allegedly “mature” works after 1857 outside Romanticism, which differs from the truth, both textual and historicalliterary, because Norwid till the end of his life drew on the Romantic tradition and traces of this practice can be discovered in most of his writings and poems, starting from his lectures On Juliusz Słowacki putting Byron (and not Baudelaire!) in the position of “poets’ Socrates”, and ending with Rzecz o wolności słowa (On the Freedom of Speech), perfectly well analyzed in the past by the late Zofia Stefanowska with respect to the Romantic influences retained in the poem, and with Milczenie (Silence), Ad leones!, Stygmat (Stigma) and Tajemnica lorda Singleworth (Lord Singleworth’s Secret). 3). Rzońca’s false diagnoses concerning Norwid’s relation towards Romantics and Romanticism result from a) accepting an extraordinarily narrow, static and basically false conception of Romanticism, reducing it personally to Mickiewicz and Byron, and ignoring the German, English, French, American, or even Polish Romanticism that was intellectually rich and creative (“not-well-enough-read” Krasiński or Słowacki plus the interesting Polish nationalist philosophy), and on which the whole 19th century, not only Norwid drew; b) the false (and grotesque) assumption that since Norwid drew on the European Romantics ample heritage, he necessarily deserves the strict etiquette of a “Romantic”, and the period of 1848-1857 should be absolutely associated with his “immaturity”. 4). Rzońca’s flagship theses about Norwid’s “pre-modernism” does not meet the conditions of sense, for anything you like may be associated with the concepts of “pre-modernism” or “modernism” that are used in the book. 5). The above charge also concerns the thesis about Norwid’s alleged “modernist symbolism”, as this kind of symbolism appeared only after the death of the poet. 6). Hence if it is possible to ascribe some significant historical-literary discovery to Rzońca, it is probably only the one creating Norwid as a posthumous symbolist. 7). Rzońca’s self-appraisal saying that his book presents “an attempt at a synthesis of Norwid’s mature work” (p. 9) should be assessed not only as an attempt – in an arrogant language, which Rzońca does not hesitate to use towards Norwid – decidedly “immature”, but as an unintentional parody of a “synthesis”. This is because Premodernism is a collection of subjective, not thought through impressions that say a lot about their author and his ambitions, but not much about the real, historical Norwid. Hence the title of the review: Pseudo-Norwid.

9

Kresy w perspektywie metodologii

100%

Kasperski E.

Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo

|

2008

|

vol. 50

|

issue (1)

49-76

EN

The article examines methodological problems of Polish-language Borderlands literature and the difficulties encountered in studying the Polish Borderlands, their past diverse population of mixed ethnic groups (Pols, Ukrainians, Jews, Belorussian, and other minor ethnic groups). The author discusses both the external determinants of the Borderlands literature (the considerable territory, the complicated ethnic structure, significant differences in language, religion, social and cultural discrepancies) as the immanent determining factors shaped by the convention or literary genres dominating in a given time and a literary tradition. He points out the need for developing a multiperspective approach to the borderlands literature. He focuses on the cognitive advantages of a comparative confrontation of various ethnic approaches to the Borderlands, which may be encountered in the literature of the neighbouring countries. He analyzes the methodology used in the research on the Borderlands, in particular, he examines the geographically-regional, biographical, autobiographical and dialogic methods. The paper draws attention to the phenomena of deternitorialization and universalisation of the problematics of the Borderlands in Polish literature, noticeable after 1945.

10

O poezji cmentarnej (graveyard poetry) – Robert Blair i Edward Young

100%

Kasperski E.

Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo

|

2012

|

issue 2(5)

179-198

EN

The term ‘graveyard poetry’ or Graveyard School of Poetry is used in the history of literature to refer to a collection of English poems of the 18th century whose character is primarily meditative and refl exive. The graveyard poets chose intensely emotional lyric genres such as dramatised and full of strong emotions meditative monologue, elegy or last will. They allowed the authors to express deeply subjective and intimate feelings, which revealed the supressed and hidden in the social discourse unoffi cial aspect of their psyche. They led to poetry which is direct, personal, confessional, intimate and reaching out of the rigour of Neoclassical convention. The compositions refl ected on mortality and immortality, passing of time, fragility of human life, horror of death, interment, grave, ‘coffi n bed’ after death, symbolism of the dead, decomposing bodies and bleak cemetery night and silence. They were full of sorrow, lugubriousness, grievance, dispair and melancholy caused by irreparable loss of a close person who passed away. They asked dramatic questions about the sense of life and death, about the meaning of the symbolism of graves for the living and the postmortem ‘what’s next’. The graveyard poetry literary and artistically wise ennobled and canonised the motif of grave and cemetery, which changed into meaningful and symbolic scenery. The Graveyard School of Poetry might have appeared to be a reaction to modern and scientifi c conversion of the world and universe image and therefore might have seemed to be a regressive and nostalgic turn towards Middle Ages and Baroque. In fact, it was paving the way for the future as well as for the romantic, radical revaluation and changes in literature, especially through opening towards subjective, extreme emotions of an individual, striving for direct poetic form of expression and by virtue of concentrating on boundary existential refl ection. The history of literature features above others the names of two poets who were the fi rst to compose poems initiating the graveyard poetry movement as a collective historical-literary phenomenon and infl uencing the successors – a Scottish poet, Robert Blair, the author of The Grave and Edward Young, the author of The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality.

11

Romantyzm i poprzednicy. Wokół dyskursów prefundacyjnych

100%

Kasperski E.

Świat Tekstów. Rocznik Słupski

|

2012

|

issue 10

5-22

EN

The article considers coming into being European, first of all English and German roman-ticism in the light so called pre-foundational discourses that are not fully romantic but they foreshadow or contain some typical romantic elements and traits. An example of such a pre-foundational discourse may be Edward Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), also regarded sometimes as the first truly romantic foundational discourse. Other such an example of the pre-foundational discourse is The New Science (La scienza nuova, 1725) written by Italian Giambattista Vico. The article discusses at the same time some different forms of the discourses founding, canonizing or deconstructing European romanticism as well, among them post-foundational i and anti-foundational ones, and gives their description and definition. The author proposes not only genetic or historical analysis of this kind of discourses but functional as well.

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Jaki Norwid? Jaki romantyzm? Krytycznie o norwidologii adorującej

Pseudo-Norwid, czyli co się komu podoba

Dyskurs antropologiczny. O antropologii literatury. Zasady pierwsze

Gotycyzm i śmiech. Groza, groteska i parodia u E.A. Poego

Dyskursy romantyzmologii. Studium (samo)krytyczne

Norwid jako strateg w kontekście rozważań o walce i wojnie

Norwid jako strateg w kontekście rozważań o walce i wojnie

Pseudo-Norwid, czyli co się komu podoba

Kresy w perspektywie metodologii

O poezji cmentarnej (graveyard poetry) – Robert Blair i Edward Young

Romantyzm i poprzednicy. Wokół dyskursów prefundacyjnych