To the memory of the Angel. Eleven remarks on Jan Błoński reading Baczyński

Jan Błoński’s essay Pamięci Anioła (To the memory of the Angel) is one of the most remarkable examples of his exceptional art of interpretation. Błoński rejects the earlier readings of Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński’s poetry, and points at religious problems as its key issue.

 

Jan Błoński’s ecstasies

The mode of literary reading Jan Błoński advocated and even often used to practise by himself was an ecstasy, that is, being enchanted and captured. And for the literary audience he – as a literary critic and scholar – left the door ajar to the garden of literary delights, especially in the years when landscape of literary research was set by the followers of structuralism. But he did not do in this matter so much as he could has done. This essay tries to answer why it was like that.

 

Historian in critic, critic in historian.

The article elaborates on the thesis saying that in Jan Błoński’s writings comes in a very fruitful way to reconciliation of two figures of literary criticism discourse: the literary historian and critic. The author discusses two factors that make this possible; the first is a combination of emotional attitude with and intellectual research practice, the second is a kind Błoński’s bifocalism, in other words an easiness in changing the perspective, the ability to simultaneously maintain in the field of view the both ranges – near and far, thus a generalising formula shows through a individual interpretation, and a detailed and static description also becomes a part of the broad and moving image.

 

Błoński on Swinarski. From Liberation to release

Jan Błoński had the opportunity to co-operate with Konrad Swinarski by working as a literary director of the Old Theatre in the 1960s and 70s. He repeatedly expressed his fascination with the artist, but he did not dedicate him any separate text. However, he spoke about it many times, both in interviews and in various commemorative texts. The author of the text analyses the various strategies of these statements: first of all love discourse within which Swinarski-artist in the process of creating functions as an object of fascination described in hot emotional tone. He shows how emotions allow Błoński avoid or even obscure the political theatre of Swinarski. He also puts the thesis that the reading of Błoński’s comments being full of doubt, misleading clues and vivid emotions allow you to re-start a discussion about Konrad Swinarski’s theatre.

 

Holocaust as impurity

The study concerns the category of “purification” and contradictory meanings attributed to it in an essay by Błoński titled Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto (The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto) (1987). The first sense, for the author the only possible, refers to the Christian penitential order (complicity of Poles for the Holocaust – guilty conscience – religion – gaining forgiveness – purification). The two other senses come into conflict with the above characteristics. One of them is associated with social system of purity, which in the post-war Polish culture has appointed the status of dirty matter to the Holocaust. The last refers to the Polish affects that treat the Holocaust as what is disgusting. Three varieties of impurities (fault – dirt – disgust) imply three different ways of purification.

 

Jan Błoński – idiosyncrasies

Jan Błoński, the great Polish literary critic, sometimes loses his insightfulness. He rejects, refuses and denies understanding. This concerns mainly the writers who he does not like or appreciate enough. From time to time he seems to be remarkably one-sided when it regards most important authors for him as well. Skrendo finds the reasons of this particular behavior idiosyncratic. How they collide with his greatness and how they build it – may be found in this article.

 

Jan Błoński and the criticism of consciousness

The research Błoński and Criticism of Consciousness (in the field of Polish literary research ‘thematic criticism’) considers the presence of this particular French tradition, very important to Błoński, in terms of his critical approach and conceptions and in his very critical practise. Błoński was the translator and the editor of the selection of philosophical-critical texts of Gaston Bachelard and George Poulet (i.a.). Especially the last one made a significant impact on critical imagination of the Polish literary scholar. The author of this essay collating the theses from Błoński’s book on Proust and excerpts from his translations from Poulet’s Time, shows the resemblance of the „thematic” presumptions, arguments and conclusions, that both critics apply to the work of Proust.
 

Błoński and the texts of French culture

The article is devoted to Jan Błoński’s connections with French literature and culture. Błoński, a Francophile and expert on France, repeatedly wrote about the greatest French novelists and playwrights. He also showed interest in twentieth-century French philosophy and French literary criticism (i.a. criticism of consciousness) and was engaged in translation and popularization activities as well. In the French texts of culture he has seen model forms of experiencing the modern cultural, historical and civilisation transformations. However, it did not prevent him from keeping the critical approach to many phenomena present in the French culture. The author of the article thus shows both the main areas of interest and fascination of the critic, as well as those phenomena in contemporary French literature and theory to which Błoński retained far-reaching scepticism.

 

Błoński and Proust

This is the comparative reading of Jan Błoński’s book Widzieć jasno w zachwyceniu and Roland Barthes’ essay entitled „Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure”. Błoński’s book was first published in 1965. Barthes wrote his text in 1978 and he didn’t read Błoński. The parallels and similarities between both texts are really striking: the question of rhythm of Proust’s novel, the problem of literary genre, critical affect of the reader etc.

 

Zmiana warty (Change of Guards) – in hindsight

Błoński’s Zmiana warty (Change of Guards), a book of critical essays published in 1961, can be read now as well as a historical document of its time, as a process of shaping individual writing style and beliefs of the future outstanding critic and professor of Polish literature. Błoński analyses few myths present in the literature of his generation: myth of autonomy, myth of misfortune, erotic myths and myth of lower class. Assessing critically the condition of the literature of his time, he sees in it the consequences of hidden crises of the whole European literature caused by experience of totalitarianism. He considers himself a kind of outcast.

 

The goal of the article is the comparison between the condition of Polish and Pakistani migrants, forcedly resettled on new territories in 1940s, depicted in fictional narratives of two women writers.  Both Central Europe and the Indian Subcontinent witnessed violent conflicts leading to changes of borders and large-scale migrations. Following the ravages of the Second World War, in 1945 Poland lost a considerable part of its pre-war territory, and acquired the formerly German regions to its West, labelled by the communist authorities as the “Regained Lands”. Poles who lost their homes in the Eastern territories were allocated the former German houses in the West. Just two years later, in 1947, the former British India was divided into India and Pakistan, and religious tensions became even more acute. As a result, millions of people previously living intermixed would now be forced to migrate – Hindus to India, and Muslims to Pakistan. In order to illustrate the fate of individuals taking part in these historical transformations, the article discusses two narratives of displacement and forced settlement on a new territory. These two stories originate from Inga Iwasiów’s novel “Bambino”, and Kamila Shamsie’s novel “Kartography”. Both authors present their protagonists with exceptional empathy, whether they are young people rebuilding their lives in the postwar Szczecin, or teenage lovers from Karachi, dealing with their parents’ traumas and their own quest for identity. In both these contexts, the key question is how to reconstruct one’s own identity in a new place, with the burden of tragic experiences still fresh in one’s memory?
 

This paper discusses the definition of the forest as a space regulated by the repetitive act of appropriation on the part of the royal authority as well as the correspondences between the rhetoric of forest possession and the construction of another locus communis for the political use of nature, i.e. female body. Spatialization/naturalization of the female body in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is introduced with the use of the interlocking imaginary topographies of “feminized” topography of Rome and that of the forest as a whore. It is between these two that the politicized female bodies of Lavinia and Tamora oscillate, mapped in language as bodyscapes, onto which violence of “lawes of the forrest” is inscribed.
 

Research for this article was financed by the Polish National Science Centre grant no DEC-2012/05/N/HS2/00331.

The necessity of rythm

This article is a review of the book Typografie by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. The article refers firstly to the problem of Polish reception of Lacoue-Labarthe’s philosophy, then discusses the question of the subject and finally concerns the main problem of relations between philosophy, literature and aesthetics presented in the book. The review also touches upon the question of Lacoue-Labarthe’s interpretation of Heideggerian ontology and political engagement in fascism which is explained in the context of his visions of both politics and aesthetics.

 

Between the human and the non-human

This article refers to the collection of essays entitled Other Spaces, Other Places. Maps and Territories (Inne przestrzenie, inne miejsca. Mapy i terytoria, Wołowiec 2013), edited by Dariusz Czaja. Inspired by the well-known anthropological concept of „non-places” (coined by Marc Augé) and M. Foucault’s idea of „heterotopy”, Polish academicians and cultural critics present their own perspectives on space in its relation to human being, nature and history. Regarding themes like: literary tourism, reproduction of landscapes, city cameras, traumatic or empty memory of a place, ambivalent status of city perypheries, ruins and ghost-villages, authors discuss many different cultural, political, social and philosophical implications of the category of non-lieux in our contemporary experience of the world that surrounds us. In the review also a question on anthropocentrism of the humanities in general, has been put.

 

What has been not written by Kraszewski

The text is a review of Matthew Skucha’s book that attempts to apply the methodology of gender criticism and feminist literary criticism in reading the late novels by Ignacy Kraszewski. The author of the review appreciates competence and efficiency of the interpretation by Skucha, who managed to reveal unconscious, non-literary determinants of Kraszewski’s prose resulting from entanglement in the patriarchal system of cultural behaviours associated with women and men in the 19th century. But she also draws attention to the dangers connected with reductional dimension of such interpellation.