Filozofia i literatura

Niniejszy artykuł omawia kwestie relacji między filozofią a literaturą, ich wzajemnych uwikłań, różnic i podobieństw. Celem tekstu jest namysł nad różnymi koncepcjami prezentującymi zależności między tymi dwoma dyskursami. Stanowisko pierwsze głosi odrębność filozofii i literatury, stanowisko drugie osłabia granice między nimi. Ten drugi pogląd ma swoje dwie wersje: jedna głosi osłabienie odrębności dyskursów w imię znaczenia czy wskazywanych sensów, druga zaś akcentuje ich wewnętrzne uwikłanie, które można by opisać w odniesieniu do dwóch zjawisk – literackości filozofii i filozoficzności literatury. Kolejnymi poruszanymi przez autora zagadnieniami są filozofia egzystencjalna jako szczególny przykład koincydencji literatury i filozofii oraz filozofia literatury jako dyscyplina eksponująca między innymi filozoficzność literatury oraz filozoficzno-metodologiczne podstawy jej badań. Interpretacji poddane zostały klasyczne dzieła Platona oraz innych filozofów starożytnej Grecji, prace Romana Ingardena, Johna Austina, Tadeusza Komendanta, Alberta Camusa i Martina Heideggera. Analiza tych dzieł skonfrontowana została z lekturą takich pisarzy jak Fiodor Dostojewski, Franz Kafka, Herman Hesse, Witold Gombrowicz oraz Tadeusz Różewicz. Artykuł ma charakter teoretyczny i wpisuje się w dyscyplinę zwaną filozofią literatury. Autor przyjmuje w nim perspektywę hermeneutyczną, zaznaczając jednak, że hermeneutyka nie jest metodą w sensie ścisłym. Tekst stawia tezę o wzajemnym uwikłaniu dyskursu filozoficznego i literackiego, mimo że historycznie niejednokrotnie podkreślano odrębność tych dwóch porządków.

Remembering Rosa María and Alejandro Rússovich, or How Gombrowicz’s Potty Travelled from Argentina to Poland

This text is a memoir of Rosa María and Alejandro Rússovich, Argentine friends of Witold Gombrowicz from the 1940s and 1950s. Due to the irreparable loss – the departure of Rosa María – the author of these words, a researcher of the reception of the Polish writer in Argentina, describes the long years of friendship with the Rússovich couple. He also emphasizes the importance of their eye testimony for the knowledge of Gombrowicz’s Argentine years and recalls some important moments of this relationship, as well as some items, such as letters, photos or the famous Gombrowicz’s potty, which are now on display in the Gombrowicz Museum in Wsola.

O expressionismo e a poética do lixo

A mais violenta das vanguardas artísticas do início do século XX, o expressionismo desafia o discurso totalitário por meio da atualização da ambivalência entre o puro e o impuro característica do regime do sagrado. O presente trabalho busca compreender o sentido do expressionismo na literatura em um diálogo frutífero com as artes visuais. A poética do lixo elaborada em diferentes âmbitos culturais pelos autores tais como Wassily Kandinsky, Czesław Miłosz, Witold Gombrowicz e Nuno Ramos torna-se nesse contexto uma forma de se trazer para o âmbito da arte a preocupação pela vida subjetiva do ser humano ameaçada pelo nivelamento totalitário.

The Millennial Antinostalgic: Yoav in Nadav Lapid’s Synonymes

In contemporary, transnational exilic cinema exile an artist is made in an exilic journey. The 21st century journey departs from entirely opposite premises than those of the ancient journey, namely with the desire to escape one’s birthplace. The aim of the exile has also transformed: from a necessary step to secure one’s livelihood or even life, it has become one of exploration. Rather than the desire to settle elsewhere or to eventually return home, the exile sets on an open-ended, exploratory journey the premise of which is finding oneself. In this, the physical journey has come to resemble the metaphysical one of the artist. The exile departs from a physical place and journeys into a metaphysical space, geography becoming secondary while still being necessary. This journey is best recounted in the film Synonymes (2019) by Israeli director Nadav Lapid, an autobiographical tale that chronicles the director’s own exile from Israel to Paris and captures his journey toward becoming an artist. The paper references two prominently antinostalgic authors: 20th century Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz and Polsih-Jewish writer Henryk Grynberg.

Witold Gombrowicz i Bruno Schulz. Biografie równoległe

This article gives an account of the overlapping biographies of Witold Gombrowicz and Bruno Schulz. It frames the events which brought the two writers together with a discussion of their literary debuts in 1933, which preceded their first meeting, and the post-war memories of Gombrowicz, who kept reminiscing about his “deceased friend”. The author describes the meetings and conversations between Schulz and Gombrowicz that took place at the latter’s apartment or in Zofia Nałkowska’s salon, their joint undertakings, such as the publication of open letters in Studio magazine, and their battle with literary critics, whose spiteful comments and attacks were aimed at what they called “young literature”. The article presents testimonies of Gombrowicz and Schulz’s mutual inspirations and interpretations, and discusses texts and events which echo their vigorous correspondence, mostly lost during the Second World War. This mosaic of dispersed facts and memories depicts a great friendship between two artists, who approached each other with curiosity and respect, but also with their typical penchant for self-irony. The idea of parallel biographies was born during the author’s work on the research project Calendar of the Life, Work, and Reception of Bruno Schulz.

Form and Power On the Disciplinary Coding of National Identity in “Pamiętnik Stefana Czarnieckiego” by Witold Gombrowicz

The aim of this article is to analyse Witold Gombrowicz’s short story entitled “Pamiętnik Stefana Czarnieckiego” in the context of the convergence between the writer’s worldview and the philosophy of Michel Foucault. Nietzschean motifs inspired both authors to formulate a similar constructivist anthropology and a similar criticism of the concept of discipline. The themes of form and creating a human being by a human being – central to Gombrowicz’s writing – correspond to Foucault’s notion of the production of the subject. In such a perspective, “Pamiętnik Stefana Czarnieckiego” can be read as a record of the experience of an individual subjected to social practices of disciplinary embarrassment, aimed at producing a subject defined by nationality and heteronormativity, as well as the experience of rebellion against an imposed identity. Such a reading reveals the political stakes of the literary output by the author of Ferdydurke: expressed in the deconstruction of authoritarian forms of empowerment and in the pursuit to replace them with forms of subjectification based on irony, fluidity and distance.

O ilustracjach Brunona Schulza do noweli „Z dworu ślepej bogini”

The cause of this investigation were two unknown drawings by Bruno Schulz (ink, two 4x7 cm, two 6x7 cm, each with the artist’s signature) found in the newspaper Chwila, a Polish language Zionist daily published in Lviv in 1919-1939. Chwila paid much attention to Schulz: 43 articles, reviews, and notes on his life and work were published throughout the paper’s history. Few texts published in the Chwila were illustrated, and book illustrations were also rare in the artistic career of the writer: next to illustrating his own books, he designed covers and illustrations only for Juliusz Witt and Witold Gombrowicz. Searching for information about the author of an illustrated story “Z dworu ślepej bogini,” Oskar Alexandrowicz (1885-1939?), a resident of Drogobych, painter, art critic, and lawyer, added to the knowledge about the circle of Schulz’s friends. For instance, an interesting character was Oskar’s brother, Roman Alexandrowicz (1882-1940), a well-known lawyer and collector of Schulz’s works which he used to show to the public in his apartment on the corner of Akademicki Square and Fredry Street in Lviv. The literary critic Ostap Ortwin (1876-1942), who was a regular patron of a famous café in the same building, most likely supported Schulz’s participation in the Spring Salon of 1922. Just opposite, on 7 Fredry Street, there was a studio of Kazimierz Sichulski, painter and professor of the Lviv State Industrial School, and Wanda Diamand’s photo studio “Światłocień.” The author also succeeded in establishing the identity and biographical data of another Alexandrowicz, Marek (1890-?), manager of one of the biggest oil companies in Europe, “Gazy Ziemne,” who was a close friend of Izydor Schulz.