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Hanna Faryna-Paszkiewicz To Be
as Rich as Forsythe
Piotr Paszkiewicz, an outstanding historian
of art, translator and, as his wife - the author of the text - adds,
a passionate traveller, died on 8 July
2002. In
a note discovered on his desk he wrote: “Voyages are the very
essence of my life and a source of renewed strength. I am fond of
distant and near destinations, the latter signifying Europe and the
former... I have in mind both private and professional trips. I have
probably grown less interested in of sightseeing and have become
more enthralled by magnificent landscapes and the view of the sun
setting and rising above a beautiful sea than by historical
monuments”.
Maria Poprzęcka The
Image Concealed by Our Eyelids
An
examination of the fallacy of seeing and memory, encountered in his
practice by the historian of art. The revealed doubts prove to be
close to the reservations addressed to the history of art in its
capacity as a science. The skeptical vision of the abilities of the
discipline are supplemented by additional apprehension concerning
the trust placed in the certainty of the "eye" and "undisturbed
perception" of the historian of art, i. e. two elementary
factors comprising the object and subject of the discipline.
George Steiner, Grammars
of Creativity
A
fragment of the third chapter of a book by George Steiner, in which
the author discusses the puzzle of creation. What does it mean to
create? What is the possibility of true creativity in a situation in
which every human construction is the outcome of a recombination of
already existing elements? G. Steiner devoted particular attention
to the language of verbal creativity, underlining the fact that
language is its own memory, enrooted in a cumulative past and a
multi-aspect future. We incessantly construct innumerable variations
of ready-made themes already present in the existing language.
Originality, therefore, appears to consist of a return to the
sources, aptly confirmed by the similarity of
originality and origins.
Paul Ricoeur, The
Abuses of Natural Memory: Restrained Memory, Manipulated Memory,
Imposed Memory
Fragment of a book by the celebrated French
philosopher Paul Ricoeur. The author's point of departure is
composed of Freud's ascertainments concerning the pathology of
memory; subsequently, this problem, formulated in the language of
psychoanalysis, was transferred to the domain of existential
experience. The "abuses of memory" (and the "abuses
of oblivion") are observed within the critique of ideology by
discussing steered forms of the manipulation or instrumentalisation
of memory. From a normative vantage point the author also examined
the "obligation of memory". This is a "journey among
the figures of the uses and abuses of memory, from restrained memory
via manipulated memory towards imposed memory".
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Biblical
and Rabbinic Foundations. Meaning in History, Memory and the Writing
of History
A translation
of the first chapter of Zakhor. Jewish History and Jewish Memory,
in which Y. H. Yerushalmi considered two current paradoxes of
Judaism. The first pertains to a fundamental issue: why did Judaism,
a religion which places strong accent on the historical aspect of
divine revelation and is permeated with an awareness of history,
attach such an insignificant rank to historiography in the Western
understanding of the term? The second paradox encompasses an equally
important problem: considering that the identity of the Jewish
nation was based on memory why did historians eschew its recording
and cultivation? The author underlines the fact that Jewish memory
concerned primarily that which was worthy of remembrance for
Biblical mentality: divine intervention in human history and man's
response. Historiography, conceived as the registration of current
facts, was thought to be meaningless. For post-Biblical rabbinic
interpretation historiography signified consent to the acceptance of
the motives of thinking present in the Bible, which possessed the
power of revealing the holistic plan of history.
Ivan G. Marcus, Magic,
Food and Mnemonic Gestures
A chapter from the book entitled Rituals
of Childhood. Jewish Acculturation in Mediaeval
Europe
, whose author discussed in depth the techniques of remembering
Biblical texts of significance in child pedagogy. Magical and
mnemonic functions were ascribed to such activity as licking honey
off the alphabet written on tablets, eating words and letters
inscribed on hard boiled eggs, or reciting spells used to deter Potah,
the prince of forgetfulness. During the Middle Ages, such
practices belonged to widely applied rituals of the initiation which
moulded Jewish identity.
Małgorzata Nałęcka Cursed
Blessing
Which
is better from the ethical viewpoint: memory which condemns to
eternal suffering or which ends in a cruel, bestially inflicted
death? Or is oblivion, thanks to which our being avoids a pitiful
end, better than finding out just how evil the world is? The
presented essay is an attempt at viewing oblivion via a
reverted paradigm. A brief analysis of the contents of the verb
"to forget" is followed by a discussion of the good and
useful aspect of oblivion/forgetting upon the basis of Loyal
Ruslan by Gieorgiy Vladimov and The Prosecutor of Judea and
Other Tales by Varlam Shalamov; the heart of the matter concerns
a recognition of the salutary value of a certain variety of
individual oblivion which protects us against the self-inflicted
suffering of memory.
Bohdan Kos, Memory and Time-space in a Search for a Whole. Several Remarks about the
Renaissance Theatre of Memory and the Charms of Cosmology
The
author queries the customary beliefs which link memory predominantly
with the category of time. By recalling the Renaissance art of
mnemonics (memory theatres and palace) he demonstrates the close
connection between memory and physical space. Remarkably, the author
also of the past, a collection of ancient documents, and a powerful
archive containing memory about the origins of the universe.
Wojciech
Michera
, Obliviscere.
On the Temptation of Oblivion and the Dilemmas of Representation
Memento, the
film by Christopher Nolan, is not only a radical criticism of "writing"
conceived as (mnemo) technology, which by relegating "living
memory" appears to render reality virtual (in the manner of a
computer programme in Matrix), but also an illustration of the
eternal temptation of oblivion. The author of the article regards
film as a special illustration of the philosophical-anthropological
dispute concerning the value of memory, envisaged as a cognitive
obstacle or source. He compares the phenomenological approach (in
which the source of cognitive obviousness is perception, and memory
is an obstacle) and the view expounded by Jacques Derrida for whom
memory, also materialised in a written form or an image, is an
indispensable and primeval "always already" existing
cognitive context.
Jacek
Ziemek
Memento.
Do You Remember This?
Then Look
The intention of this text was to delineate
a wider horizon of the pragmatic of the reception of Memento, a
film by Christopher Nolan. The author ponders the consequences of
the appearance of a motion picture which openly perceives the theme
of the post-projection memory of the audience and equally openly
manipulates with data transmitted in the course of the viewing. The
text resorts to the fundamental premises of cognitivism (as a method)
and internet discussions involving members of the audience (as raw
material). A critical presentation of the assorted models of
interpreting the film, proposed by a group of spectators, and the
method of reconstructing the plot.
Ruth
Ellen Gruber
Cities
without Jews
Over the past couple of decades, and
particularly since the fall of communism in 1989/1990, Europe has
seen the growth of a phenomenon whereby the “Jewish phenomenon”
- anything to do with Judaism, Jews, Jewish culture, the Holocaust
and Israel - has been increasingly recognized as part of national
history and culture and embraced by the mainstreams. As part of this
trend, Jewish culture - or what is perceived or defined as Jewish
culture - has become a visible component of the popular public
domain in countries where Jews themselves now are practically
invisible. This is a Europe-wide phenomenon, observable in countries
whose people were the perpetrators as well as the victims and
bystanders of World War II and the Holocaust, in countries that
straddle the one-time Iron Curtain, in countries where anti-Semitism
is also still alive and sometimes openly voiced. In the points to a
similar union by referring to contemporary cosmological intuition.
From this vantage point, space is conceived as a storehouse1990s,
Paris-based historian Diana Pinto coined the term ,Jewish Space"
to describe the place occupied by Jews, Jewish culture and Jewish
memory within mainstream European society - a place that is
universal and exists regardless of the current size or activity of
the local Jewish population. Europeans have “filled” this Jewish
space with a “virtual Jewish world” that often dwarfs Jewish
communal presence. For some, the process has been a way of filling
in the blanks of a communist-era agenda that long made Jewish issues
taboo. For others, it is a means of coming to terms with the Nazi
legacy or a key to building (or rebuilding) a democratic and
tolerant state. Motivations range from serious scholarly pursuit to
the crass quest for a quick buck. The process is filled with
ambiguities and some of the elements are disturbing, such as the
tendency to regard Jews, at times, as cherished museum objects
rather than as living, vital entities. The history and memory that
are resurrected are often distorted or codified to suit specific
local and personal needs. They must coexist with present and past
realities, and sometimes do so uneasily. Sincere attempts to
reintegrate what has been lost, destroyed or forgotten coexist with
superficiality, slogans and show. Nostalgia, stereotypes and
commemoration can become shorthand tools in the creation of what
often “absolute fake” environments; “where the boundaries of
game and illusion are blurred” and where “absolute unreality is
offered as a real presence.” But there is much, too, to applaud. A
dozen years ago it would have been difficult to imagine that Jewish
culture would have such a prominent and popular place in the
European mainstream. And for the first time, Europeans, and European
countries, are recognizing Jewish culture, Jewish history and the
Holocaust itself as part of their own narrative and not a separate
“Jewish thing.”
Anna
Bolecka
Memory
and Childhood
Memory is composed of remembering and
forgetting, which comprise the condition of our development and
delineate the rhythm of life. Both phenomena, albeit ostensibly
contradictory, possess a single source - time.
Memory attaches prime importance to the
past, predominantly to childhood. Upon certain occasions, our memory
constitutes a receptacle of sorts, used for preserving the past.
From such a "memory tin" we may extract everything which
has not been deformed by the processes of remembering and forgetting.
The mechanisms of time and memory may conceal sources of artistic
creativity. The man of letters ascribes significance also to
mythical memory, a mixture of the real and the imaginary, the
individual and the shared. Mythical memory is a living fount and an
answer to our profound need to halt the passage of time.
Antoni
Kroh
, The
Old
River
Valley
. The Brass Cross, A Dog Called Puk, Typewriters
Three successive pictures from the past (in
"Konteksty" 3-4 2002 we published another fragment of the
book prepared by the author).
A. Kroh
refers to his private memory, at the same time showing how History
incessantly intertwines with the unique fate of an individual.
Amelia
Franas
, Execution
of Memory
An
attempted description and interpretation of Executions of
Precious Recollections, a multi-media spectacle staged by Blixa
Bargeld. The point of departure of the show was a questionnaire
composed of fifty questions devised by Bargeld himself and
concerning ways of restoring the private past and important "places"
in individual memory (e. g. remembered colours, flavours and aromas).
While answering the Bargeld questionnaire, the author became, due to
an unexpected twist of fate, one of the heroines of his spectacle (or,
more exactly, its Polish version). In her capacity as the "author"
of part of the scenario, she turned into a subject of the production,
while as a spectator she acted as its object. This double role,
which recalls — toute proportion gardée - the experiences
of Kirsten Hastrup, is the theme of anthropological reflection.
Joanna Zdanowska, Bargeld's
Couch, or On the Manner of Describing a Spectator
An attempted reflection dealing with the
dynamics of human memory, inspired by a spectacle featured by Blixa
Bargeld at the Stary Theatre in Cracow (November 2001). The widest
possible framework for the deliberations is offered by Paul
Ricoeur's conception of narrative identity, the outcome of research
into the memory of witnesses, conducted by Elizabeth Loftus, and the
premises of Freud's classical psychoanalysis. The prime thesis of
the text pertains to the astounding flexibility of individual memory
and the possibility of its considerable modification with the
assistance of assorted suggestion techniques, including suitable
artistic impact (in this particular case: a theatrical spectacle).
The article is composed of two intertwining motifs: psychological
data are referred to a concrete staging, and theoretical reflection
is illustrated by a description of the relevant reaction (impression)
of the spectator. Finally, J. Zdanowska took into consideration the
declarations of the author of the play concerning the aim of the
project and the manner of its realisation.
Stefanie Peter Kogel
Mogel as the "Polish Madeleine"? The Destroyer-Romanticist
Blixa Bargeld Recollects Poland
A journalistic
account, written by an anthropologist, about Executions of Memory,
the spectacle given by the German performer Blixa Bargeld in
Cracow. This view "from the outside" deals with the manner in
which Poles construct the memory of their childhood.
Gerdien Verschoor Whiskers
— Polish Reminiscences
During the 1990s the author, a Dutch
historian of art, lived in Poland where she received her Ph. D.
degree in the Institute of Art at the Polish Academy of Sciences and
fulfilled the function of the cultural attaché at the Dutch Embassy.
This collage of brief recollections is a record of private
impressions of Polish reality.
Jan
Gondowicz
Memory
Palace
A single episode from Madame Bovary by
Gustave Flaubert - a description of the ball given by Marquis
Vaubyessard - discloses the structure of a description subjugated,
probably unconsciously, to the rules of the functioning of memory.
Numerous reminiscences in Flaubert's novel indicate the biographical
and even traumatic foundation of this episode. This deviation from
strict realism is perceived by the author of the essay as a
foretaste of literary techniques typical of the twentieth century,
and given the collective name of magical realism. The source of such
practices should be regarded as tantamount with the introduction of
the subconscious memory.
Lev Losiev Josif
Brodski's Venice
The
author of this text on the image of Venice in the works of Josif
Brodski meticulously analysed all those fragments which refer to
Venice — the symbolic motifs (water, mirror) in the poetic tale of
the city. In an extremely valuable approach he placed Brodski's
Venice against the backdrop of Russian nineteenth — and
twentieth-century literature, allowing the reader to become aware of
the originality and poetic novelty of this particular perception of
Venice.
Wojciech Bońkowski, Twelve
Pigs Examine Their Reflection in a Mirror.
On the Venetian Legend
Venice,
a unique town, is also inimitable due to the manner in which she has
created her own legend while competing with other mediaeval
city-states not only militarily and economically but also at the
level of the image and myth. The author shows the process in which
religion as an institutionalised element of the life of the republic,
subjected to its secular authorities, became an important factor in
the construction of the identity of the commune. A town gained
holiness if it was built upon the physical relics of its holy
patrons. Deprived of an ancient lineage, seeking prestigious
patronage, and facing the necessity of building a myth which would
overshadow the rival myths of other Italian towns, in 828 Venice, or
rather its citizens, stole the body of St. Mark the Evangelist from
the tomb in Alexandria; soon, work was inaugurated on the
construction of a basilica, completed in 1094 - This was not enough
- Venice went on to devise a myth of her foundation, based on a
legend about the two Aquileiae - on land and Venice, located on a
lagoon created in 421 when the former was razed by Attila, the
Scourge of God. The cause was conveyed onto the Hun ruler, the
executor of a divine plan, and the town was placed among the
foremost defenders of Christianity. The next element in the creation
of the legend was the granting of a teleological meaning to the
existence of the original Aquileia — a Chronicon compiled
in 1081-1208 mentions the foundation of the town by fugitives from
Troy. The following myth-creating element pertains the transference
of the town to the region of the lagoon - the chronicle by Martin de
Canal (1267-1275) notes that
Venice
was established en Van de incarnation de nostre seignor Jesu
Crist, on the day of the Annunciation. Thus, its existence
becomes a fragment of a divine plan of the redemption of mankind.
Now to explain why the doge and not a Church supervisor of the
republic became the depository of the relics of St. Mark. The translatio
of the body served the salvation of Christianity since the
Alexandrian tomb of the Evangelist was threatened by Egyptian
Moslems. There emerges the motif of the dream of Mark, central for
the whole myth, in which the Evangelist, while travelling to
Aquileia, saw an angel predicting the future. The Venetian epos of
St. Mark contains all the anthropological myth-creative elements - praedestinatio
at the basis, as well as passio, inventio and translatio;
the latter two occur in reverse order (the passio of St.
Mark is followed by the translatio of his relics, but inventio
took place after the redesigning of the basilica, when the body
was found). Venice also constructed her own myth of independence vis
à vis all secular authorities as evidenced by the act of
bestowing ducal insignia upon the doge, performed by Pope Alexander
III in 1152; this myth is to be served by celebrations of
anniversaries of the victory over Aquileia (1162) and a carnival
whose culmination is the Thursday prior to Quinquagesima Sunday,
entailing the slaughter of pigs - the annual contribution made by
Aquileia. The fundamental components of the republican myth of
Venice include liberty, independence and piety; the existence of the
town is associated with the supra-temporal mythical sphere by means
of causal-effective ties. Imaginary facts are remembered and
celebrated, and everything, including memory and commemorations, is
subjected to myth-creative activity: memory precedes and creates
events.
Dariusz
Czaja, On
the Way to Venice. Imaginary Journeys
Can
one be in Venice without actually staying there? The author
convinces us that this feat is possible. Upon a basis of three
literary texts (a story by Włodzimierz Odojewski, an essay by Harry
Matthews and Georges Perec, and a novel by Italo Calvino), he
followed closely the rhetorical mechanisms of constructing an image
of Venice. In conclusion, he pondered on the cognitive status of
those tales and asked about the potential meaning of the expression:
"I really was in Venice", thus doubting the truth of
eye-witness realism.
Ewa
Malec
The
Myth of Venice. The Production of Memory
A brief outline of the history of the
manner in which mediaeval Venice constructed its own myth, based on
three towns-models: Rome, Constantinople and Jerusalem. Thanks to
the joint efforts of historiographers, artists and doges, Venice
managed not only to create a synthesis of those three holy cities
and to win pride of place in Italy, but primarily was capable of
establishing an urban past worthy of its splendour. Chronicles thus
described the divine origin and ancient lineage of the town,
multiple churches erected in the Byzantine style featured
newly-obtained valuable relics, pilgrims to the Holy Land were
welcomed, and numerous statues, columns and mosaics were brought
over from Constantinople. The ensuing effect exceeded the most
audacious expectations and became the foundation for a later,
entirely different myth of Venice - the town of death and illusion
depicted in literature.
Małgorzata Dziewulska,
Piotr Kłoczowski, A Remembered Conversation: I
Would Not Like to Say Too Much
In a dialogue with
Małgorzata Dziewulska
Piotr Kłoczowski shares his visual recollections about writers and
artists from the milieu of the Parisian "Kultura", i.a.
Kot Jeleński, Czapski and Lebenstein as well as reflections about
people who opted for the status "of modest life and
indifference towards all the goods of this world" in order to
protect themselves in the ruptured postwar world against becoming
uprooted, and to preserve inner freedom.
Hanna Baltyn Drawerlandia
A large
fragment of non-fiction, a book belonging to a current which may be
described as "household anthropology" - the author
resorted to a description of the contents of drawers and home
collections of assorted objects or works of art in an attempt to
determine the factors which mould the awareness of a member of the
Polish intelligentsia from the 1970s to this day. The depicted
drawers are gatherings of things and memories. The construction
principle of the book is to follow a route from a a description of
an object to a concealed anecdote, sometimes family history, an
experience, or a tale. This is the essence of household history, a
humble particle of history "in general".
Aleksandra Melbechowska-Luty, Monuments
-"Figures" of Deceptive Memory
Monumental sculptures erected in order to
commemorate assorted persons and events are associated with memory,
both the one linked with a cult and the variety which has become
neglected or failed to meet social expectations. Their wide range of
impact meant that they were unable to satisfy everyone; frequently,
they divided people and provoked numerous discussions, conflicts and
clashes whether they were beautiful or ugly, desired or unwanted,
the object of a cult or destroyed. Up to 1918, the partitioning
authorities in Poland forbade the erection of national monuments,
which thus became concealed in churches, cemeteries and private
estates. In the course of 180 years the most tumultuous fate was
that of the statues of Prince Józef Poniatowski and Włodzimierz
Potocki by Bertel Thorvaldsen, the numerous monuments of
Adam Mickiewicz
intended for Poznań, Cracow, Warsaw and Vilnius, and the Warsaw
statue of Chopin (designed by Wacław Szymanowski, 1904-1926). It
was they which stirred the greatest emotions, press polemics and
controversies. During the 1920s, works based on "pure
form" and mechanical construction were created by Zbigniew
Pronaszko and Mieczysław Szczuka. The inter-war period revealed new
political priorities as well as state and "native" targets;
this was the time of the projects and erection of numerous monuments,
the most magnificent being The Airman by Edward Wittig
(1922-1932). A prominent figure of "national memory" was,
alongside other heroes, Józef Piłsudski, the frequently portrayed
founder and Head of the state. The end of the World War II ushered
in numerous monuments dedicated to the ideologues of the revolution
and socialist activists, all of which were pulled down after the
systemic transformations of the Third Republic. Until recently,
sculptors found it difficult to overcome the traditional monument
"figuration"; this state of things lasted to the
appearance of new contents and formal solutions, such as those in
the monument commemorating Those
Who Perished in the East (which includes a fragment of a
railway track and a train carriage filled with crosses), executed by
Mirosław M. Biskupski in 1995.
Monika Rudas-Grodzka
,
Slavdom.
Memory and Oblivion in the Parisian Lectures by
A. Mickiewicz
and Novels by J. I.
Kraszewski
A presentation of Slavic "embryology"
interpreted by
A. Mickiewicz
and J. I. Kraszewski. The author of the article concentrated her
attention on the mystery of Slavdom and tried to discusses its
status: unclear, indefinite and scattered. The Romantic authors
regarded the very name of the Slavs, their lineage, the precise
limits of Slavic settlements and the place and purpose of the Slavs
in history as an unresolved riddle. The search for an active, native
element ended with even greater ignorance of the distant past. In
the opinion of M. Rudas-Grodzka responsibility for the inability to
reach the roots should be placed upon the official history of the
victors and its strategy of obliterating memory. The puzzle itself, das
Unheimliche, is enrooted in the Slavs themselves, hostile and
alien towards each other. This stand testifies to an inclination to
disclaim the past, and to a national paralysis and amnesia of sorts.
The prime features of disowned Slavdom are a specific type of
passive potency and the spirit of anarchy, which frequently assumes
demonic forms, as in the case of Masław.
Maria Janion Uncanny
Slavdom
Two
literary visions of Slavdom, outlined in novels by Zygmunt Krasiński
and Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, whose main hero is Masław, the
mediaeval Duke of Mazovia. The works in question were written half a
century apart and therefore propose a different portrayal of the
Slav world.
The Gothic novel written by young Krasiński
resorted to motifs borrowed from the vampirical tale about Countess
Elizabeth Batory, testifying to the existence of a link between the
category of the ominous (das Unheimliche) and the frenetic
style conceived as Romantic excess. Masław is a sadistic hero who
observes crime with "icy indifference". "Blood"
and "wildness" are emblematic key words. Krasiński
devised a depiction of Slavdom envisaged as pseudo-native, a world
which, on the other hand, appears to be local and indigenous (the
plot takes place in Opinogóra) and, on the other hand, as totally
alien and incomprehensible. The novel by Kraszewski, with its
references to historical chronicles (Gallus Anonymous, Kadłubek and
Długosz), additionally examines the relation between the Slav world
and its Christian counterpart. The mysterious figure of Masław
combines several crucial moments from the history of statehood and
Christianity in Poland. Kraszewski's Masław is a mighty lord who
instigated a pagan rebellion against Christianisation and the Early
Piast state. The author of the article situates the ideological
vision expounded by Kraszewski against the backdrop of meticulously
discussed debates conducted by historians delving into the existence
of a Slavonic Christian rite at the outset of the Polish state.
Emphasis is placed on the fact that Kraszewski introduced Romantic
themes into popular literature. He also maintained that civilisation
in Poland began with Christianity, and minimalised the role played
by the violence to which early Christianisation resorted. In the
world portrayed in the novel the outburst of Slavonic frenzy becomes
a signal indicating das Unheimliche.
Michal Otorowski, The
Memory of Conspirators
The
union of memory and the conspiracy theory of history is something
more than a mere bond of memory and history, traditionally expressed
by means of the mythological affiliation of Clio and Mnemosyne. In
order to prove this the author reached for the sources of
conspirationism, which is by no means an eternal or natural feature
of the human comprehension of the world. The first part of the
article (The Crooked Mirror of Modernity) presents the
conspiracy theory of history, unknown in antiquity or the Middle
Ages, and conceived as an attempted description of the modernisation
processes which ended with the French Revolution. The author
indicated not only the conditions which rendered this turn towards
conspirationism possible. The "black" legend of secret
societies had to be preceded by its "white" counterpart,
born upon the threshold of the seventeenth century from Utopian
reflections aware of their own limitations. The projects of the
period, expressed with the assistance of mystification, were
supposed to inspire and nurture the supporters of the Great Reform.
They indicated the manner of linking far-reaching targets with
pragmatic activity based on Machiavelli's philosophy and so-called
world wisdom (Weltklugheit), and suggested how to bypass the
problem of historical discontinuity, a threat to the task of
renewing the world. The latter question is discussed in the further
part of the article (On the Other Side of the Looking Glass),
where the author's point of departure is a sentence borrowed from Fatna
fraternitatis, describing the purported discovery of the grave
of the founder of the Rosicrucians: "If it should happen after
many hundred years the Order of Fraternity should come to nothing,
they might by this only vault be restored again". In order to
interpret this thought properly, M. Otorowski turned to the works of
Francis Bacon, who not only created a project of a twin organisation,
but was probably the first to offer a philosophically cohesive
justification of "white" conspiracy. An analysis of the
works of the Lord of Verulam intentionally ignored the boundary
between the "literary" and the "scientific",
binding in literature on the subject. The assumption that Bacon's
thought is uniform is best testified by the fact that an older
civilisation, free from the errors of ancient civilisation, is
mentioned both in New Atlantis and Novum Organum (aphorism
no. 122).
Małgorzata Baranowska
Postcards.
An Unideal Collection (3). Remember Me!
A successive
text about postcards, this time written with the concept of memory
in mind. The postcard is predominantly a messenger of emotions and
an ambassador of memory which would like to offer a ready pattern
for every occasion; hence we frequently encounter the inscriptions:
remember me, do not forget me, think about me. If we place
historical time along the vertical axis and contemporaneity on the
horizontal one, then the majority of the collectors will situate
their collections vertically, in accordance with the conviction that
regardless of the chosen theme of the collection, the postcard is a sui
generis document of the epoch. Such an approach stems from a
well-grounded tradition, indisputable in our culture.
Danuta
Kuźnicka, Grzegorzewski's Gombrowicz
An attempt at an interpretation and
analysis of the artistic language applied in Jerzy Grzegorzewski's
three stagings of plays by Witold Gombrowicz: Ślub (The
Wedding) in the Polski Theatre in Wrocław in 1976 and the Warsaw
National Theatre in 1998 and Operetka, shown by the latter
company in 2000. The author of the article proves that Grzegorzewski
was capable of embodying the creation and dissolution of form,
described by Gombrowicz, into concrete stage objects, situations and
human behaviour. The form, which denotes culture generated by man,
succumbs to gradual degradation under the impact of uncontrolled
primitive forces. The latter bear the features of totalitarian
systems which negate the existence of transcendence and ascribe all
rights to man. Each of the discussed stagings presents a different
aspect of the considered phenomena. The spectacle from 1976
accentuated the individual aspect: the disintegration of culture
which could comprise a projection of the consciousness of the
cognitive subject, while the later staging of Ślub depicted
processes which proved to be the authentic experience of the main
hero. Operetka portrayed the social aspect of the issue at
stake, by placing the dissolution of culture within the context of
the Polish nation, society and history.
Stanisław Tabisz, A
Conversation with Zbysław Maciejewski
The
acclaimed painter Zbysław Maciejewski speaks about the creative
process and accompanying conditions, unsuitable reflections on art
which do not pass the test of time, the attitude towards
continuation and change in painting as well as truth present therein
and its universal qualities.
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