In this article, I will analyse Fotoplastikon (2009) by Jacek Dehnel, a collection of a hundred old photographs accompanied by the same amount of poetic proses. The working principle of the book follows that of stereoscopy and bases itself upon the illusion of depth originating from the parallel reading of the images and texts placed next to them. The work, which resembles an old photo album, becomes a multimedia tool capable of creating a third dimension in spite of its flat surface. The result is a dialectic game the reader is asked to take part in starting from the subjective experience of the author. This article aims to describe the different strategies by which Dehnel, starting from Barthes’ concept of punctum, leads the reader to formulate his/her own interpretation, which is often distant from the monoreferentiality of the image. Moreover, I took into consideration the idea of supplying the article with some excerpts of the work translated into Italian.
In this paper, I will examine Mała apokalipsa (1979) by Tadeusz Konwicki with the aim of highlighting how, despite all the mentions of the reality of the then Polish People’s Republic, the novel can also be fully appreciated outside its cultural and historical context. Following an analysis of the ways the structural principle of the book, the grotesque, interweaves reality and surreality, I will explore the Italian edition of Konwicki’s novel through the lens of world literature’s postulate concerning the possibility of a work gaining new meanings outside its original framework.