Tomasz Kunz

In my article, I attempt to analyze the philosophical and artistic premises of the autobiographical project realized in the poetry of Marcin Świetlicki. I try to show that this project leads to negation of the need of existence, both in the order of a work and in the order of existence, of a distinct form of subjective identity, typical for the modern culture of presence. The subject of my interest is a peculiar kind of lyrical autobiographical narrative which I analyze referencing, among others, the concept of authenticity understood in the context of de Man’s approach to irony. In the final part of the article, I suggest a possible direction of considerations concerning the eponymous phenomenon of nonexistence as a negative, “phantom” form of presence that escapes presentation

The article presents major challenges and opportunities facing Polish studies in the United States. Beginning with a brief historical survey, it assesses the state of American Polish studies at the start of the twenty-first century. It argues that to map the changing landscape of the field, it is necessary to move away from stereotypes that have hampered a fuller, more complex understanding of American Polonistics. It concludes by examining paradigm shifts that are taking place across the discipline as it is practiced in the United States.

The article deals with the phenomenon of an insistent and recurring interrelation between the living and the dead in Tadeusz Różewicz’s works. This motif – strictly connected with the generational and individual trauma of war experiences – manifests itself not only in the symbolic forms of memoirs and recollections, but also through the visions of physical, all-too-real presence of profaned, unburied dead bodies, taking revenge on the survivor tormented by ambivalent feelings of guilt and shame. All this leads to the emergence of the spectral ‘un-dead’ in Różewicz’s poetry. The analysis of this phantasmatic fi gure in the complementary – anthropological and poetological – perspectives becomes the main subject of the article.

The article constitutes an attempt to refl ect on the present condition and potential future of Polish studies (and the future of university humanistic studies in general) as seen through a simultaneous reading of the fi fth chapter of John Maxwell Coetzee’s book Elizabeth Costello, entitled Humanities in Africa and two short essays by a French philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard, taken from his book Simulacra and Simulations. The main focus of attention is the threat of de-professionalization of humanistic studies associated with the uncontrolled multiplication of new critical languages, the disappearance of ideological and competence arguments and an uncritical cult of radical inventiveness which is not accompanied by an accumulation of knowledge.

This paper is directly inspired by the publication of the book Braterstwo poezji, which is a collection of correspondence, poems, conversations and discursive texts documenting the long-term dialogue of two outstanding Polish poets: Czesław Miłosz and Tadeusz Różewicz. In the article I refer to three issues: the Paris meeting of the two poets in 1957, the circumstances and form of the poetic welcome extended by Miłosz to Różewicz through the poem “Do Tadeusza Różewicza, poety,” and the accusations of nihilism stubbornly leveled by the author of Ocalenie against the younger poet. By means of these three examples, i try to show that the metaphor of spiritual brotherhood advanced in the title of the volume and in the introductory essay by Andrzej Franaszek does not reflect the complexity and ambivalence inherent in the poets’ relationship, especially of Miłosz’s distant and reserved attitude to the worldview and poetic philosophy of Różewicz.