The problem of good as conceptualised by Vladimir Solovyov
Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900), a great Russian philosopher of religion, in his concept of all-unity assumed an integrity of a human being and his natural drive towards realization of an ideal of good, truth and beauty. He was voicing a belief that these values, being an ethical imperative, should be rooted in foundations of faith in that morality, hidden inside us and manifested through conscience and reason, synthetizes everything that a person does. Believing that good – in nature, in a human being, society and history – has a Devine provenance, the philosopher was also emphasizing the need for action which proves a human calling to fulfil what is good – on every level of participation in life. This belief, shaken a bit towards the end of the philosopher’s life as a result of his difficult life experiences, remained strong enough to find its expression in the last decade of the 19th century in an important treatise The Justification of the Good (Оправдание добра), which to a significant degree is an attempt to “deal with” I. Kant’s moral teaching, based on rational premises, and amoralism of F. Nietzsche. This article outlines Solovyov’s perspective on ethics, which having evolved in his work, has as a result gained a status of a separate discipline.

Concrete Poetry Translator’s Tasks. Methodological Prolegomena

The paper focuses on the methodological approach to the problem of translating experimental poetry. The presented analysis is based on three texts: Julian Kornhauser’s Przekład jako objaśnienie (O tłumaczeniu poezji konkretnej) from 1983, Jerzy Jarniewicz’s Tłumacze na urlop! and Leszek Engelking’s Konkretne decyzje tłumacza, both from 2006. Each of these three articles includes a translative strategy towards the concrete poetry. The term, in narrow meaning, can be used to describe the worldwide movement founded simultaneously in Switzerland/Germany (by Eugen Gomringer), Sweden (by Őyvind Fahlstrőm) and in Brazil (by the Noigandres group – Haroldo and Augusto de Campos and Décio Pignatari) in the early 1950s. The movement itself represents a form consisting of both verbal and visual elements and, in consequence, unites the distinctive marks of poetry and painting. With a vague status of a hybrid, as well as the experimental character, this specific genre is situated beyond the traditional categories of analysis and interpretation. Despite the confusion in terminology, though, there is fundamental requirement which the various kinds of concrete poetry meet: concentration upon the physical material from which the poem or text is made.
Considered as an object, the concrete poem causes a fundamental problem in the frames of the translatology. The concrete poetry interpreters and researchers are disunited on the question of its translatabilty. Julian Kornhauser distinguishes the two major kinds of the concrete poem – a “poster-poem” and the “non-poster” one, the latter allowing or even requiring a translator’s intervention. The “poster-poem”, owing the complicated visual structure, cannot be translated. Jerzy Jarniewicz defines the entire concrete poetry as untranslatable, classifying it in the terms of the visual arts. Leszek Engleking presents a contrary view, which considers a translator as an interpret who promotes the experimental forms of poetry in the new literary context. The author of this paper attempts to put these methodological concepts into translation practice, examining the concrete poems of Eugen Gomringer, Friedrich Achleitner, Gerhard Rühm, Hansjörg Mayr and Jiří Kolář among others. While the most significant component of the concrete poem is language itself, treated predominantly as a graphic structure, the translation strategies can differ significantly. The analysis evokes its internal status, which appears to be miscellaneous from different perspectives, as it initiated an interdisciplinary genre by searching for new artistic horizons.

Although Hermann Hesse is perceived by his readers mainly as a prose writer, Paweł Moskała discloses Hesse’s other face, and draws his attention to Hesse’s poetry. In the article below Moskała reviews the array of the poet’s attitudes towards death.The author, analyzing the theme of death in Hesse’s poetry in various periods of his writing,concentrates on the evolution of poet’s attitudes, from existential-subjective to reflective. It should be underlined that the awareness of transience and theanticipation of death accompanied the poet during his whole life and in all his works, in which the desire to live interlaced with the humilitytowards death and the acceptance of volatility of life.