Stanisław Gawliński
Konteksty Kultury, Vol. 9 , 2012, pp. 148 - 53
The author of the sketch convinces that literature may be treated as a model of a culture, as both these areas of human activity are subject to the same rules of dynamism and alternation, i.e. replacing worn-out forms by innovative ones.
In the history of the Polish culture of the 20th century three types of culture are distinguished: politicized, autotelic, consumerist. The predominance of one of the types listed was connected in Poland with the experiences of the nation, where, after brief moments of freedom, there were long years of bondage or political oppression.
The situation changed radically only after 1989, when Poland regained full independence. But it was because of the imitative nature of the cultural changes that in the democratic society of the Polish Third Republic we currently have a surfeit of aesthetical offers with simultaneous vagueness of norms, hierarchy and value, which constitutes a relative characteristic of West European postmodernism.
Stanisław Gawliński
Konteksty Kultury, Vol. 7, 2011, pp. 5 - 11
Stanisław Gawliński
Konteksty Kultury, Volume 11, Issue 1, 2014, pp. 104 - 114
https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.14.008.1754The author of the sketch examines the genesis of nostalgia in the works of an outstanding novelist Jan Józef Szczepański (1919-2003). It stems both from the historical experience and the moral principles taken by the authorofPolish Autumn,in his life and rich output, from Joseph Conrad. The defense of the Conrad’s ethos in the authoritarian system of the People’s Republic of Poland had been Szczepański’s principal task since his debut until late 1990s. The nostalgia is strongest in the following works: Mija dzień [The Day Is Passing](1994), Jeszcze nie wszystko [Not Everything Yet] (1997), Rozłogi (1997), Obiady przy świecach [Candlelight Dinners] (2003), published in the last decade of his life full of manhood and various suffering.