Chopin’s life in Warsaw fell at a time of important phenomena and processes in history, the arts, aesthetics, etc. This article deals with the artistic and social milieu to which the composer belonged and looks at the question of the common artistic imagination and aesthetic ideas elaborated within that environment, based on the example of Chopin and two poets: Stefan Witwicki and Dominik Magnuszewski. Chopin’s relationship with Witwicki, which gave rise to his songs to the poet’s texts and lasted into their time in exile, is considered in respect to discussion on folk culture that was on-going at that time. That culture was treated as a sign of the nobly archaic or else as a manifestation o f modern art, of the “art of the future”. These convictions did not function as alternatives; their overlapping characterised various aspects of early romanticism. The output of Magnuszewski, meanwhile, shows the transformation of traditional figures of rhetoric into Romantic means of expression. It displays a style of writing that constitutes an act o f Romantic hermeneutics in respect to the language of tradition. Avoiding simple comparisons of works of very different artistic level and significance, the author analyses Chopin’s relationships with the two poets by reference to the generational experience - as variously understood - of creative artists born during the first decade of the nineteenth century, which connected artists of different levels of talent and varying individual fortunes.
The body of the discussion is devoted to two books, critical editions of Polish translations of the works of Spanish Baroque period, that are related to theatre. The first title in question is the annotated bi-lingual edition of El principe contante by Calderon de la Barca, the drama piece known in Poland as Książe niezłomny [The Constant Prince] and brilliantly translated by Juliusz Słowacki. The other book is the annotated translation of Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo [New art of writing plays] by Lope de Vega. Both publications not only evaluate the complex and fascinating picture of Spanish theatrical culture of the Golden Age to the Polish reader, but also substantially widen our understanding of the dependence between the type of the stage and the vision of the world constructed by a playwright and the theatre. They may also provide substantial support, and important inspiration, to theoreticians of theatre and drama, comparatists, historians of ideas, historians of mentality, etc.
The article analyses texts regarding the opera character, or indirectly linked to it, by a number of authors from the late eighteenth century to the last decades of the nineteenth century: Sulzer, Rousseau, Hoffmann, Stendhal, Baudelaire, Wagner. The author focuses on their theoretical texts and artistic prose. The analysis indicates a strong multilateral involvement of the reflection on the topic of character in contemporary aesthetic views and anthropological concepts.
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