Far from being enthusiastic “modernolatry” of Italian futurism, Polish futurism demonstrates an attitude of ambivalence toward modernity. This is particularly evident in the Polish approach to that very synecdoche of modernity which is the machine. In his essay of 1923, the leader of the group, Bruno Jasieński, compares the fetishistic cult of the machine, which characterizes the Italian approach, with the utilitarian one of the Russians, exemplified by a quote from Majakovskij. To these two propositions, as a sort of Hegelian synthesis, he adds a Polish one consisting in the conception of the machine as a prosthesis, a continuation of the human body. Thereby he introduces an idea later known as “cyborg”. The category of cyborg is also useful to understand the work of another today almost forgotten Polish writer of the Twenties, Jerzy Sosnkowski. He was the author of a short novel, A Car, You and Me (Love of Machines), in which a whole chapter concerns the chief character’s dystopian nightmare wherein machines take control over the world. The third section of the essay deals with the idea of man a machine – an old, 18th century conception, which became actual anew in the 20th century and whose traces we can findc among others in a well-known poem by Tytus Czyżewski. Thirty years before N. Wiener, Polish modernists seem to have sensed the social, political and anthropological implications of the mechanization of work.
The Author presents the most significant Manifestos of Polish Futurism in Italian translation. They follow the original Polish text, also maintaining the graphic aspects.
Artykuł poświęcony jest zagadkowemu tekstowi Michała Modzelewskiego pt. Zdarzenie prawdziwe, w którym przedstawiono przebieg terapii magnetycznej, prowadzonej przez Antoniego Malczewskiego na Zofii Rucińskiej, ostatniej towarzyszce życia wołyńskiego poety. Choć autor zasadniczo nie podważa hipotezy jego poprzedników co do tego, że Malczewski mógł być autorem tekstu (być może francuskojęzycznego), który był pierwowzorem dla opowiadania Modzelewskiego, to jednak wnikliwa analiza Zdarzenia prawdziwego oraz usytuowanie opowiadania w szerokim kontekście literatury magnetycznej pozwala na wysunięcie nowych hipotez odnośnie do jego genezy oraz na lepsze zrozumienie zarówno typowości, jak i wyjątkowości historii leczenia Zofii Rucińskiej. Nadal pewne pytania pozostają bez odpowiedzi, ale jedno wyłania się z całą pewnością: wbrew literackiemu toposowi biernej, uwiedzionej przez przebiegłego magnetyzera kobiety, to Zofia Rucińska okazuje się tu stroną czynną, burząc wszelkie stereotypy genderowe tamtych czasów.
EN
The article is devoted to a mysterious text by Michał Modzelewski titled Zdarzenie prawdziwe [A Real Event], which describes the course of a magnetic therapy conducted by Antoni Malczewski on Zofia Rucińska, the last life companion of the Volhynian poet. Although the author basically does not challenge the hypothesis of his predecessors, claiming that Malczewski could be the author of the text (perhaps written in French) which was the prototype for Modzelewski’s short story, a careful analysis of Zdarzenie prawdziwe and situating the short story in the broad context of magnetic literature allows to put forward new hypotheses concerning its genesis and provide a better understanding of both the typical and unique character of the history of Zofia Rucińska’s treatment. While some questions remain unanswered, one thing emerges with certainty: despite the literary topos of the passive woman seduced by the cunning magnetizer, it is Zofia Rucińska who turns out to be the active party, destroying all gender stereotypes of that time.
A collection of articles published to mark the 20th anniversary of the Nobel Prize being awarded to the poetess. This post-conference collection of essays on Wisława Szymborska is the outcome of an academic session and the first separate critical overview published in Italian.
The article explores the connection between Julian Tuwim’s oeuvre and the concept of liberature. Coined by Zenon Fajfer in the 1990s, the term liberature accentuates the visual and spatial aspects of a literary text and highlights the fact that the meaning of a text depends on its material form. The author reconstructs Tuwim’s approach to formal experimentation related to the spatial and visual aspects of a text. To this aim, he analyses Pegaz dęba (written before 1939, first published in 1950, and republished in 2008), whose manuscript survived the war in a suitcase buried close to Tuwim’s house. The book is a collection and study of various genres and other forms of artistic expression which showed liberary features long before the term was coined. Ranocchi argues that although Tuwim treated what is now called liberature as an insignificant and marginal curiosity, he nevertheless defined it as an area of interest for both literary historians and writers. Thus, Pegaz dęba can be seen as the first Polish attempt to systematize the literary works that have more recently been labelled as liberature and as such won critical acclaim.