The New Aesthetic of the Late Nineteen Twenties Reconsidering the Periodization of the Interwar Avant-Gardes

The avant-gardes of the nineteen twenties are discussed in the art historical literature as the art products of a rarely upbeat decade, which featured great utopian aspirations and progressive art between the wake of World War I and the Nazi takeover in Germany, as well as the consolidation of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. This essay depicts the decade as being far from a homogenous period, demonstrating that the early internationalism and sense of unlimited possibilities gave way, in or around 1923, to less idealistic, more pragmatic views and practices in even the avant-garde. If examined in this framework, the reception of avant-garde artists and works in the late 1920s that had been enthusiastically embraced in the first years of the decade, was understandably cooler. Professional eminence was overwriting great ideas. The lack of the earlier fervor had disappeared, not because the art was worse, but on account of the new Zeitgeist that brought about the new moral idea of utilitarianism, requiring that the artists be, first of all, of use to the community. Several artists and art writers suddenly turned against those ideas and art that they had only a short time earlier held in the highest esteem.

Inspiracje Moniuszkowskie w muzyce XX wieku. Opera Pomsta Jontkowa Bolesława Wallek Walewskiego

<p>Bolesław Wallek Walewski był jedną z czołowych postaci krakowskiego życia muzycznego w okresie międzywojennym. Do jego najwybitniejszych dzieł należy opera <em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em>, której libretto jest kontynuacją <em>Halki</em> Stanisława Moniuszki. W artykule scharakteryzowano muzyczne związki pomiędzy obu operami, widoczne m.in. we wprowadzeniu przez Wallek Walewskiego cytatów motywów z <em>Halki</em>, a także wskazano różnice stylistyczne między obydwoma dziełami. Wyznaczają je trzy elementy: warstwa językowa librett, główne założenia dramaturgiczne oraz styl muzyczny. Libretto <em>Halki</em> napisane zostało przez W. Wolskiego bez aluzji do elementów gwarowych, natomiast B. Wallek Walewski w libretcie <em>Pomsty Jontkowej</em> wykorzystał w szerokim zakresie gwarę podhalańską. W przeciwieństwie do <em>Halki</em>, osią dramatu Wallek Walewskiego jest motyw zemsty górala na możnych panach. Styl muzyczny opery Walewskiego wykazuje pokrewieństwo z muzyką Wagnera, z nurtem muzycznego folkloryzmu (poprzez nawiązanie do folkloru podhalańskiego), oraz impresjonizmu. W artykule poruszono ponadto problem recepcji dzieła. <em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em> była najbardziej znanym i często wystawianym w Polsce dziełem operowym krakowskiego kompozytora. Jej prapremiera odbyła się w Teatrze Wielkim w Poznaniu w 1926 roku. Na przełomie lat dwudziestych i trzydziestych opera ta cieszyła się w Polsce dużą popularnością, wystawiły ją także inne teatry operowe w kraju (z wyjątkiem sceny warszawskiej). Po II wojnie światowej <em>Pomstę Jontkową</em> wystawiła Opera Wrocławska.</p><p>SUMMARY</p><p>Born in Lvov but fi rst of all associated with the musical circles in Krakow, Bolesław Wallek Walewski (1885-1944) referred to one of Stanisław Moniuszko’s most famous operas – <em>Halka</em> [Helen] – when composing his own opera Pomsta Jontkowa [Jontek’s Vengeance] (1924). The contemporaries regarded Halka and Pomsta Jontkowa as a series. Both operas share common elements: <em>Halka</em> (Warsaw version) and <em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em> are four-act operas, the same characters appear in their librettos (Jontek, Zofia), and in both works the confl icts between the gentry and the peasants are highly important. The musical connections between the operas are evidenced by Walewski’s use of the leading motifs. Moreover, both in <em>Halka</em> and in <em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em>, there are highlanders’ dances. Walewski also includes melodies from Halka into his work.</p><p>The principal difference between the two operas is determined by three elements: the language of the librettos, the main dramatic assumptions, and the musical style. The libretto of <em>Halka</em> was written by Włodzimierz Wolski (1824-1882) without references to dialectal elements whereas Walewski liberally used the Podhale highlanders’ dialect in his libretto. Moreover, unlike <em>Halka</em>, which emphasizes the personal experiences of the main heroine and social confl icts, the axis of Walewski’s drama is the motif of the highlander’s revenge on the wealthy lords. The musical style of <em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em> shows, on the one hand, a similarity with Richard Wagner’s music (harmony, instrumentation, and the way of treatment of leitmotifs), while on the other – a similarity to the trend of musical folklorism and impressionism. An innovative idea is the combination of impressionist features with the stylization of highlanders’ folklore.</p><p><em>Pomsta Jontkowa</em> was the best known opera of the Krakow composer in Poland in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, and at the same time it was one of the most original Polish operas of the interwar period. It combines traditional elements with modern ones, and it is an expression of the late inspirations by Wagnerian music and esthetics in Polish music, as well as referring to the best traditions of the Polish national opera.</p>

“I Hate You, Romeo.” A Heretic Re-writing of Romeo and Juliet

In the nineteen twenties last century a young poet and diplomat from Warsaw, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, was taking part in an international congress of intellectuals in Heidelberg. During his stay in Germany he wrote The Lovers of Verona (the title in Polish reads Kochankowie z Werony), a play that offers a radical reinterpretation of the main message of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Iwaszkiewicz’s vision of the young lovers, who are infected by insurmountable enmity, was determined by his pessimistic views on the nature of love and desire, expressed also in his other plays, prose and poetry. This article discusses the circumstances behind Iwaszkiewicz’s adaptation that shed light on the reasons for this unorthodox re-writing of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. This is done to highlight the complex interrelations between authorial writing and translation activity which in case of writer-translators are determined by a net of political, social and personal factors.

Bukharan Tajik

Standard Tajik, or Modern Literary Tajik as it was called during the Soviet era, was established in the nineteen twenties and thirties based largely on the dialects of the Bukhara-Samarkand area, which was at the time the undisputed cultural centre of the Tajik-speaking population. Dushanbe, the current capital of Tajikistan, was then a small village with a population of only a few hundred and had no cultural heritage comparable to that of Bukhara or Samarkand. Bukharan Tajik, whose phonology is described in this paper, is a variety of Tajik that played a particularly influential role in the phonological standardization of Tajik, which took place for the most part in 1930. For instance, the Scientific Conference of Uzbekistan Tajiks of 1930 resolved that the dialect of Bukhara must be the designated basis of the sound and orthography of literary Tajik (вaroji tajjorī вa kanfiransijaji ilmiji istalinoвod 1930: 2). In August the same year, the Linguistic Conference held in the then newly established Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic also adopted a similar resolution that establishes the ‘language of the Tajiks of Samarkand and Bukhara’ as the reference point in establishing the literary (i.e. standard) pronunciation (Halimov 1974: 126). According to Bergne (2007: 82), ‘the same Linguistic Conference of 22 August 1930 in Stalinabad decided that the phonetic base for the language had better be the dialect of Bukhara’. Thus, the Bukharan Tajik of today is the direct descendant of the variety of Tajik which served as a primary basis of standard Tajik phonological norms; and hence differs little from standard Tajik phonologically and phonetically.