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Grzegorz
Pawłowski My
Home, Jerusalem
Reminiscences from a voyage to the Eternal
City of Jerusalem. The effect of awaiting successive images has
assumed the shape of a series of photographs which document
experiencing the fragmented shapes of history.
Wojciech
Brojer
The
Establishment of the House of God
As
long as they wandered, God accompanied them and preceded them in the
Ark of the Covenant and below the Tabernacle. Once they settled down
in the Promised Land, it became necessary to build Him a House. Who,
and in what manner was to decide where in the homeland of the twelve
generations of Israel should the Temple of Jehovah be erected? The
answer to this question is to be found in the texts of the Jahvist (ninth
century B. C.), cited in chapter 24 of 2 Samuel (2 Kings) and
repeated (almost) faithfully seven hundred years later in the Chronicles
(1 Chronicle, 21). The account given by Samuel is
immersed in the political reality of the emergent Kingdom of Israel
and Juda, the organisational undertakings of King David, and the
revolt against the new structures. The inspiration, however, came
from God (the wrath of Jehovah) , and the foundation of the House of
God was composed of hierophany together with its drastic
consequences and the abrupt intrusion of divine energy into earthly
reality; the Temple's construction site emerged in a dramatic
dialogue between God and David. Heretofore destructive energy
assumed the form of Jehovah's altar in Jerusalem and on Mt. Zion -
land obtained from the King of the Jebusites.
Anthony Vidler The
Architectural Uncanny. Essays in the Modem Unhomely
Unhomely Houses is the first chapter of
Anthony Vidler's The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern
Unhomely (MIT Press, 1992), in which the author traced the motif
of haunted houses recurring in Romantic literature, i. a. in the
stories of Edgar Allan Poe (The Fall of the House of Usher),
Victor Hugo (Les Travailleurs de la mer), and E. T. A.
Hoffmann (The Golden Flower Pot, Rath Krespel). By analysing
literary images of unusual houses and, at the same time, referring
to The “Uncanny”, the celebrated text by Sigismund Freud,
Vidler attempted to define the element of the “uncanny” as a
special experience in architecture. Assorted symptoms of spatial
eeriness, e. g. the feeling of disorientation, instability, and
claustrophobia experienced when faced with the abyss of an imaginary
void, a labyrinth or a prison, are discovered also in literary
descriptions by Thomas De Quincy (Confessions of an English
Opium-eater) and Charles Nodier (Piranese, contes
psychologiques), one of the many examples of the Romantic,
sometimes mistaken interpretations of Giambattista Piranesi 's Carceri
d'lnvenzione series.
Maria Rogińska, The Road Home. Certain Aspects of the Model of the World in Russian Orthodox Narration from the End of the century
In the presented reflections on the
organisation and conceptualisation of living space in post-Soviet
Russia (1991-2004) the loss of the habits of sacralising space is
confronted with a tangible longing for the Home, conceived as a
sacral locum. The author attempted to examine, in the spirit of
structuralism and phenomenology, the status of the home in models of
the word contained implicitly (C. Lévi-Strauss) in Russian
mythology. She sought an image of the home in contemporary Russian
Orthodox narration (upon the basis of 900 documents of daily life)
by resorting to a presumption of a profound analogy between the
religious and secular order, disclosed by Russian history as a whole.
In this perspective, the text delves into the theme of the home and
the border, the home and prison, the home envisaged as a stop along
the way, members of the household and newcomers, the home and fate,
the home and the family, sight and sound in the space of the home,
static and dynamic qualities, and time and eternity. The author
analysed concepts of the small and large home (Fatherland, native
land), which appear as elements of a wartime image of the world,
typical for contemporary Russia.
Jan
Gondowicz
, Collector of Fissures
A biogramme
of Sigismund Dominikovich Krzhizhanovsky vel Zygmunt Krzyżanowski
(1887-1950), whose voluminous prose and numerous essays were
revealed in Russia some fifteen years ago. This sophisticated and
concise author — a Pole writing in Russian — transformed
philosophical and physical concepts into succinct and astonishing
tales worthy of Calvin, Buzzatti, Landolfi, Rosendorfer or Borges,
and maintained in their spirit.
Zygmunt Krzyżanowski Quadraturite
This novel (Kvadraturin, 1926) from
the collection Chem lyudi
miortvi, not published during Zygmunt Krzyżanowski's
lifetime, starts in the manner of Bulhakov and ends in a truly
Kafkaesque vein. A miraculous agent, obtained thanks to a pact with
an unclean spirit and used to expand an insufferably cramped flat,
leads to an explosion of the void: the flat becomes a breeding
ground for an alternative, prison-like universe.
Tomasz
Rodowicz
Home, or Wandering in Time
An account of the first excursion made by
the actors of the Gardzienice Theatre in September 1982 to northern
Norway (Lapland) and the only nomadic tribe in Europe, the Sami. Its
members have retained their distinctness, identity, occupation (reindeer
breeding) and archaic songs known as JOJK. A moving description of
the experience of seeking the reindeer, loneliness, and the feeling
of being lost, together with an attempt at defining the true nature
of the home.
Andrzej Coryell Drawing
a Home
A reflection by an author of aphorisms and
poetry, expressing the dream-like dimension of a home.
Jerzy S. Wasilewski On
the Trail of an Imaginary Escape The Long March by Slavomir Rawicz
A description of an impressive escape to
British India across Mongolia, Tibet and the Himalayas, accomplished
by a Pole arrested by the Russians in 1939 and detained in a
Siberian labour camp — has recently enjoyed a worldwide career,
and is treated as a document. To an ethnographer familiar with the
terrains in question it remains obvious fiction, brimming with naive
images of the East and glaring errors in depictions of cultural
reality. The plot is full of infantile inventions, and totally lacks
details which simply had to be included if the described events
really took place. A critical review of episodes, landscapes, and
portrayals of the natives proves that the book was written by
someone who had never been there. The current popularity of the
publication demonstrates the degree to which the boundary between
the virtual and the real has become obliterated. The reader is
increasingly less concerned with finding out whether something was
an historical fact or fiction, vero or merely bene
trovato.
Maciej
Rożalski
Candomble
Candomble is
a general term pertaining to a group of religious cults in Brazil.
There is no single, strict definition of the essence of this
phenomenon, which cannot be even described as a cohesive religious
formula, since Candomble is extremely differentiated and
syncretic. Depending on the region in which it takes place the
ritual is composed of various elements. Diverse impacts, partially
of Catholicism and partly of local Indian culture, together with the
religious beliefs brought over from Africa by black slaves, produced
a unique mixture characteristic for the multi-cultural and ambiguous
qualities of its form. As a rule, mention is made of a set of cults,
thus avoiding eventual problems associated with definitions. There
does exist, however, a certain joint feature typical for all offshoots
of Candomble and worthy of special attention
- so-called possession which, according to
the adherents of the cult, is a manner in which the pantheon of the
worshipped deities reveals itself. The gods descend into dancers
selected for this purpose by assuming control over their bodies. The
nature of this divine possession remains unexplained. On the other
hand, it is known that it appears both in Brazil and in other cults
of African origin in Cuba and Haiti, not to mention large parts of
Africa, where it originated. It is even possible that this form of
religious activity was present already in the rituals of ancient
Greece. The author tells one of the stories about Candomble, the
Brazilian cult of possession.
Jacek
Olędzki
Poetic Diaries. Peru, the Iconosphere of the Most
Extraordinary Petroglyphs
In 2002 the author organised at Warsaw
University a (“ceiling”) display of Peruvian petroglyphs. In
this extremely personal sketch he describes his interest in the
phenomenon, and takes the opportunity to present anthropological
themes and publications which he regards as important.
Jacek
Olędzki
Quiet
and Loud
A highly personal interpretation of Rondo
de Gaulle'a (The de
Gaulle Rondo), a book by Olga Stanisławska - a reporter's
account of a trip to Africa.
Tomasz
Szerszeń
BRISÉES or Traces of Africa. On
the African Journal of Michel Leiris
In Poland, Michel Leiris is associated
predominantly with the surrealistic movement and placed within a
constellation of such names as Georges Bataille or Antonin Artaud (the
recently translated into Polish Mirroir
de la tauromachie /Lustro
tauromachii / stems from Bataillean inspiration which explains
such an interpretation of Leiris' writing in Poland). Meanwhile,
Leiris was also an ethnographer. Years later, interest in his works
was disclosed by such influential anthropologists as James Clifford.
The author of text presented in this issue concentrates his
attention on L’Afrique fantôme
(1934)
- a journal written by Leiris during his
ethnographic expedition across Africa. The journey came as a
breakthrough for Michel Leiris:
all problems, topics, manners of writing characteristic for
his later works originate in L’Afrique fantôme. This intriguing text evades all
classifications: it combines the features of an intimate diary, an
adventure story, an ethnographic treatise, and traveller's notes...
The author stresses the connection between “ethnography”,
“art” and “life” — Afrique
fantôme is simultaneously “ethnography” and “autobiography”.
Wojciech Z. Dąbrowski Verandah
Verandah is
a description of the first four weeks of the author's stay in New
Guinea and the historical event which took place at the time - a
missionary expedition across the jungle to terrains which up to then
have remained heathen. For two years the author conducted
on-the-spot work in the Western Highlands of Papua-New Guinea. His
research concerns changes of the consciousness among tribes of the
Hagen culture, living in Jimi Valley, which in the second half of
the twentieth century found themselves under the impact of a
powerful gravitation of Western civilisation. In contrast to many
other earlier colonised lands, Papua-New Guinea, which from the
1930s remained under Australian administration, did not experience a
mass-scale influx of settlers and the resultant sudden attack
launched against its tribal organisation.
Magdalena Prosińska Feeding a Dead
The reportage, written by an ethnographer
working in Van Quan, North-eastern Vietnam, tells a story of her
experience of meeting a lady-shaman called a then singer, who
invites her to assist in a ritual called feeding of a dead person.
The Tay shaman calls the soul of Mr. Tuan, who died one hundred days
before and leads him through dangers of an Underground world. An
army of the Then spirits helps the shaman and Mr. Tuan to reach the
Land of Ancestors. The article describes preparations for the ritual
and gives many details about the ceremony and people taking part in
it.
Jan Strzelecki, Jadwiga Strzelecka The
presented block of texts relating to the tragically deceased Jan
Strzelecki,
sociologist, mountaineer, political
activist and publicist, encompassed predominantly that part of his
life which was associated with mountain climbing and research
expeditions. The texts include reminiscences by Strzelecki's wife,
Jadwiga, documenting his mountain excursions (primarily in the Tatra
Mts.); an interview conducted by Andrzej Wilczkowski, brimming with
fascinating anecdotes, in which Strzelecki recalled his first
encounters with the mountains and the beginnings of his career as a
mountain climber and alpinist; Strzelecki's “ethnographic”
recollections from an International Sociological Seminar held in
Vittakivi (Finland), as well as his private notes and letters linked
with the Spitsbergen expedition.
Wiesław
Szpilka
On Sealskins
“Sealskining”
is a special type of skiing which thanks to a suitable construction
of the skis, the bindings, and the shoes, and by using two glued-on
strips of fabric makes it possible to reach, and descend from, every
arbitrarily chosen spot. Ski-touring and ski-Alpine mountaineering
also describe the phenomenon in question, which offers a feeling of
unrestrained liberty, but also the experiences of exertion, pain and
hazard.
Andrzej Pieńkos The
San Michel Book and Home
From the time of eighteenth-century
expeditions the island of Capri remained a popular destination of
artists and researchers alike. In 1876 Axel Munthe, a young
physician from Sweden, fell under the spell of the island's beauty
and commenced building his dream residence, which he named Villa San
Michel. In 1929 he published his life's work, an autobiographical
novel entitled The Book from San Michel, a source of
information about a profound fascination with classical culture,
which gave rise to the construction of the author's highly
individual home. The villa was not subjected to any architectural
conceptions, nor did its owner employ a professional architect. The
end result was
the outcome of inspiration sought among the ruins of Capri and the
labour of several local workers.
A. Pieńkos
analysed this interesting example of hazardous architectural
eclecticism, and inquired into the essence of this phenomenon, the
limits of aesthetic fascination, and the arbitrariness of an
artistic collage.
Aleksandra Melbechowska-Luty Places,
Traces, Shadows. On the Oeuvre of Daniel de Tramecourt
As an artist Daniel de Tramecourt is both
an amateur and a professional. He had never graduated from an
Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1964-1967 he attended a secondary arts
school in Lublin, where he learned the basic workshop skills and
embarked upon individual work. For long he has succumbed to various
fascinations, and is captivated by the art of Bosch, the Surrealists,
Witold Wojtkiewicz, Jean Dubuffet, and Francis Bacon; in about 1995
he chose his master — the acclaimed painter Jacek Sienicki, in
whose works he discovered a spiritual affiliation. De Tramecourt
applied graphic techniques and drew and sculpted a lot, but painting
remains the core of his oeuvre. He recreates the surrounding world:
sites, landscapes, houses, interiors and objects, but also that
which he sees with the “inner eye” and which had been rendered
indelible in traditional memory - archetypical motifs taken from
philosophy, literature, art, the Bible and mythology, and thus those
realms which contain the ever-present idea of returnability, the
“eternal return” to the sources. In this manner, his art not
only mirrors substitutes of reality, but glows with the shadows of
“primary things”. During the 1980s de Tramecourt painted
quasi-ludic grotesques, intensively “coloured” genre scenes
enacted in the market square of Kazimierz Dolny. Subsequently, he
entered the domain of the human dwelling - up this very day de
Tramecourt executes magnificent likenesses of the universal space of
the home and metaphorical, usually deformed, portraits of men and
women shouldering the heavy burden of existence, but also endowed
with a secret spiritual life. De Tramecourt paints still life
compositions and utensils: tables, chairs, fish, wine, fruit and
flowers, which become iconic signs belonging to existence, albeit
free from the commonplace and banality; in this unique manner, he
elevates and consecrates details of daily life, devising his own imaginarium
of man's real and supra-sensual existence. De Tramecourt uses
gouache, pastels and oil paint; he seeks special texture effects and
strives to improve impasto and glaze. As a habitual participant in
artistic life, he frequently showed his works in assorted Polish,
German and French cities. The most relevant impulse in selecting the
artist's path of life proved to be a deeply encoded determination
and a conviction that he must devote himself to art, which has
become the sole reason for his existence.
Lechosław Lameński, To
Conserve, to Restore, or Perhaps Simply to Tear It
All Down?
A review
of three books written upon the initiative of Jarosław Krawczyk,
editor-in-chief of the monthly “Mówią Wieki”, concerning the
history of the protection and conservation of monuments of
architecture: Wokół Wawelu. Antologia tekstów z lat 1901-1909 (About
Wawel. An Anthology of Texts from the Years 1901-1909, Warszawa-Kraków
2001), Alois Riegl, Georg Dehio i kult zabytków (Alois Riegl,
Georg Dehio and the Cult of Historical Monuments, Warszawa 2002) and
Zabytek i historia. Wokół problemów konserwacji i ochrony zabytków w XIX
wieku. Antologia (The
Historical Monument and History. On the Conservation and Protection
of Historical Monuments During the Nineteenth Century. An Anthology,
Warszawa 2002).
Ewa
Klekot
National
Heritage Monuments and the Relation towards the Past
Ewa
Klekot
wrote about the modern and postmodern
comprehension of the concepts of “history” and “heritage”,
the rhetoric which emotionally appropriates (“colonises”) past
experiences, precisely as an “heritage”, in order to legitimise
the presence, and the role played within such rhetoric by the
concept of “monuments of the past”. The article is an
introduction to texts presenting the outcome of the research
conducted by students of the Institute of Ethnology at Warsaw
University among visitors touring the royal castles in Cracow and
Warsaw.
Joanna
Zalewska
(National
Heritage Monuments - Who Do They Belong To?) examined
egalitarianism and elitism, as well as participation and exclusion
in the attitudes of visitors touring the monuments.
Agnieszka Śmiertka (Monuments
and Guidebooks, or the Source of the Tourist's Knowledge About What
is Worth Seeing) studied the image of the two castles as seen by individual tourists using
guidebooks.
Anna Kucio (Knowledge
About National Heritage Monuments Upon the Example of the Royal
Castle in Warsaw and Wawel Castle) demonstrated the fact that knowledge about
national heritage monuments is not historical but haphazard lore
about the past, whose part is composed of symbols and patriotic
feelings.
Bartłomiej
Kowal
(Between Tourism and Religion.
Experiences of National Heritage upon the Example of the Royal
Castle in Warsaw and Wawel Castle) - with a differentiation between
the concepts of “emotional experiencing” and “experiencing as
such” as his point of departure, the author showed how in the case
of visitors at Wawel Castle and the Royal Castle in Warsaw tourist
experiences change into experiencing the “national heritage”.
Agata Kapturkiewicz
(Must
a National Heritage Monument be Authentical) described the
ways in which a tourist understands authenticity, and the manner in
which the latter influences the evaluation of a given site as a
heritage monument.
Maja
Stachowiak
(Power
and Politics within the Context of National Heritage Monuments in
the Opinion of the Visitors) attempted to reconstruct the common understanding of the concepts of
“power” and “politics”, and wrote about the ways of
situating them within the space of national heritage monuments: the
inclusion of the former and the exclusion of the latter.
Wieslaw Szpilka Wit
Personal notes made after reading Dariusz
Czaja's Sygnatura i fragment. Narracje antropologiczne (Signature
and Fragment. Anthropological Narrations), a book which demonstrates
how assorted spaces of culture can become the domain of ethnographic
analysis. A confrontation of various perceptions, forms of presence,
and shapes of the same, performed in order to come closer to the
ultimate sense.
Mateusz Braun A True
Myth, or How Karol Wojtyła Became the Pope
The historical event of the election of
Karol Wojtyła to the office of Pope, as perceived by the community
of Gorlice, possesses the symptoms of a miracle and is located
within mythical space. The story recounted by the author pertains to
the oath sworn by the Pope's father during the battle of Gorlice,
one of the bloodiest clashes during World War I. This tale has all
the features necessary to create a myth about the miraculous
intervention of Providence.
Seweryn A. Wisłocki, The Court
Rules that Nikifor is Epifaniusz Drowniak
On 26 March 2003, after a seven-years long
trial, the Regional Court in Muszyna proclaimed that the real name
of the famous naive painter from Krynica, known as Nikifor, was
Epifaniusz Drowniak. The trial was the outcome of years-long efforts
on the part of the Łemko Union to recognise the artist's Łemko
descent.
Peter Martyn, The
former highway inn of Paweł Gut-Mostowski
at Poronin: an historic monument of wooden architecture in (dire)
peril
This open letter is intended to inform
readers of the threat that an appallingly ill-conceived “road
improvement” scheme poses not only to an outstanding example of
vernacular wooden architecture but equally a place of exceptional
natural beauty. The planning scheme, which forms part of the general
transforming of the highway from Cracow to Zakopane into a dual
carriageway, is intended to link this concrete and tarmacadammed
“zakopianka” with the regional road that leads to Slovakia.
The
apparent indifference shown by the local authorities of Poronin
towards the former inn at the confluence of the Poroniec mountain
stream and River Zakopianka may be explained partly by its
over-exaggerated association with V.I. Lenin, but also by the
likelihood that the “Tatras junction” is merely a sign of what
is to come; namely, the entire area's redevelopment. The forces of
change currently moving in on an enclave of uniqueness, where people
achieved a remarkable degree of harmony with a beautiful but harsh
natural environment, may be seen as part of an ongoing catastrophe.
The entire region could only have been spared the worst excesses of
modern 'civilisation' if the local highlanders themselves had
demonstrated an intuitive foresight which, due to a paradoxical
course in their more recent history, they seem to have all but
completely forfeited. Having in large part introduced themselves to
the American' way of life by escaping - much like the Irish - rural
poverty and overcrowding, embracing with arms ever wider
outstretched successive achievements of the industrial and
techno-informational ages, the Highlanders currently find themselves
between the devil of material well-being that has so long enticed
them and the growing despair of witnessing their once safe, but now
insecure, homeland being turned into a spiritual no less than an
environmental wasteland.
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