Marta Koronkiewicz

TIM BURTON´S VERSION OF PANNY Z WILKA (THE YOUNG LADIES OF WILKO)
The aim of this essay is to reflect on different aspects and understandings of “the uncanny” in the poetry of Justyna Bargielska. The authoress begins with analysing a few of the critical commentaries and reviews of Bargielska’s work; it seems that, one way or another, most of the literary critics – including the mainstream critics associated with a specific political option, like Andrzej Horubała – tend to infantilize the poet, identifying the subject of Bargielska’s poetry with an adolescent girl, immature and somehow unresponsible or dependent. As the authoress argues, this phenomenon has a lot to do with the literary criticism being not able to grasp and comprehend Bargielska’s references to children’s literature – picturebooks, fables, fairy tales, etc. – which remain fundamental for the very basis of her oeuvre. What the authoress proposes is to re-read Bargielska’s poems alongside the picturebooks and in context of the popular fairy tale themes, while at the same time implementing the anthropological figure of the “trickster”.

This essay aims to describe the difference between ‘barbarism’ and ‘anarchism’ in contemporary Polish poetry. Analysing the critical voices in the wake of a well-known essay by Karol Maliszewski, in which he coined the term ‘barbarism’ to refer to certain contemporary Polish poets, we come to the conclusion that the distinction between ‘civilised’ and ‘barbaric’ poetry after 1989 has been based solely on the literary personae of the various authors. Thus we claim that the generational shift between the poets of brulion and the younger ‘anarchist’ poets may be seen as leading to a certain new kind of persona, which is, at the same time, more coherent (due partly to their clear political statements) and more independent of the poem (due to their non-literary sociopolitical activities).

From Translator to Poet and Back: Adam Ważyk’s Translation Output as Part of Polish Literature

The article offers an analysis of Adam Ważyk’s translation work, particularly in the context of its influence on the shaping of contemporary Polish poetry. The author aims to showcase the impact of Ważyk’s translations on some of the recent developments within Polish literature; to this end, she employs the distinction between translatoras-envoy and translator-as-lawmaker, as proposed by Jerzy Jarniewicz. Ważyk is here seen as an example of a “lawmaker”, and compared to Piotr Sommer – another author influential within a similar audience. The author argues that in his original choice of what to translate, Ważyk was driven by a desire to project onto the Polish context – to reproduce in his native language – a set of poetic and social circumstances associated with the French avant-garde movement; finally it served the goal of making Ważyk’s own work more comprehensible to his Polish readers. At the turn of the 21st century a group of Polish poets who had expressed interest in Ważyk were also attracted to the work of poets translated by Ważyk; the influence of these foreign authors was thus mediated by Ważyk’s own work.

Wojaczek among the youngest

In the article, the author considers ways in which representatives of the youngest generation of poets refer to the poetry of Rafał Wojaczek, pointing out that, on the one hand, the legend which has grown around this poet’s biography is something tempting and difficult at the same time, and on the other hand, in his poetics the young poets find a way to go beyond irony and towards a non-pathetic sublimity, which has a generational significance for them. According to the author, such effects of reading Wojaczek can be found today in poetry of Konrad Góra and, artistically related to him, Kamil Brewiński or Szymon Domagała-Jakuć. Andrzej Sosnowski is pointed out as an important intermediary who offers a refreshing interpretation of the poetry of the author of Inna bajka.