Jerzy Franczak

The aim of the paper is to interpret Wiesław Myśliwski’s The End of Peasant Culture, with particular emphasis on the issues such as the historical isolation of the peasantry, its nation-building potential, idealization and mythization of the peasant. The writer uses elegiac discourse to formulate his own literary program aimed at restitution of lost elements of traditional culture. The last part of the article contrasts this funeral vin vision with the phenomenon of disco polo, which is the proof for the vitality of peasant culture, reborn in a lowbrow and hybrid form.

The article presents some changes in the sociology of literature and particularly the inspirational role which was played in this respect by Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexive anthropology. The classical sociology of literature used to focus on the issue of many-sided determination of a literary text. A literary work was perceived as a function (image, equivalent) of social relations which contributed to its creation. The gradual abandonment of the positivist and Marxist reductionism had led to the shift of emphasis to empirical research and an analysis of reception, which in turn had led to the development of the sociology of reception and the sociology of literary communication. The central dilemma of these disciplines (how to reconcile the idea of social determination with evaluation) could be solved only on the basis of a non-classical sociology. Pierre Bourdieu described literature as a system of communication, dependent on the field of cultural production, supporting the mechanism of distinction and functioning as a determinant of an affiliation with a privileged groupand as a criterion of exclusion. At the same time, he pointed to this aspect of literature which allows one to stage a crisis of semantic structures and present platitudes as serious problems, and in this way – reveal the assumptions and presuppositions created and reconstructed by a social game.

The article is an attempt to interpret Life and Times of Michael K as a work focused on building a conversion situation. Conversion is understood here, according to the theory by Rob Wilson, as the secularized equivalent of metanoia. The basic theoretical context is the thought of Peter Sloterdijk, who redefines religion as a spiritual exercise system and presents modernity as the domain of alternative systems of vertical tension. From this perspective, the novel by J.M. Coetzee offers a spiritual exercise for the epoch of “despiritualization of asceticism.” The protagonist’s repeated escapes and his voluntary hunger strike (juxtaposed with a similar theme in Franz Kafka’s short story) elude simple interpretations. The writer experiment with narrative strategies aimed at building a meta-allegory and ironic inversion of interpretive clichés, forcing the reader to face the imperative of a complete change of life.

This article analyses one of Schulz’s most famous stories which is based on an ancient symbol of the Book. The Book can be understood as the refl ection of an archaic myth or as a dream about the state of androgyne, a sign of the lost childhood and a metaphor of the Saint Spirit. The protagonist rejects the Bible as a false source of the revelation and finds the illumination in an old newspaper. A journalist rhetoric overlaps the biblical stylization; the contrast between them shows that every style is inadequate. The illumination cannot find it’s expression, it’s hidden sense is lost. The protagonist discovers that the essence of the human condition is the infi nite journey between the signs. The article presents multiple interpretations of the story but its aim remains on at developing a relatively new one. The Book symbolizes the absence of the Absolute. Dispersed in a process of verbalisation, the Absolute vanishes between multiple languages. The elusive Ultimate Sense turns into myth. This is a very modernist trait of Schulz’s literature. His inquiries for a Hidden Rule appear futile yet he continues searching for it. He wants to reach the truth of Logos but instead fi nds himself imprisoned in the mumble of countless stories.

The paper is an attempt to interpret a poem by Julian Kornhauser, usually read as a manifesto of the new poetry rejecting social obligations, so important for the so-called New Wave generation. This interpretation aims to highlight hidden contradictions between the critique of the propagandist manipulation and the need to describe the personal experience. Kornhauser makes here a turn towards aesthetics as aisthesis, understood in its original meaning by Baumgarten and rediscovered in modern philosophy (for example by Mike Dufrenne), and opens up his poem to the sensible world.