The aim of the article is to present the individual and intense experience of sensing the world, whose account can be found in the novel Salt of the Earth. The term “religious experience” was taken from William James. The author of the article first mentions the interpretative difficulties connected with the structural irony, which calls into question the statements verbalized in the novel. Taking into account this complexity, he points out four elements which justify talking about a religious experience in the Salt of the Earth. Firstly, he points up the title, which evokes a religious perception of the world and assumes a response to a calling which comes from God. Secondly, he refers to the Prologue (which does not contain structural irony), which contains the motif of war as a blasphemy. Thirdly, he analyses those passages in which the narrator weakens their distance towards Piotr Niewia­domski’s point of view and favourably assumes the magical interpretation of natural phenomena. Lastly, he refers to the Christian-Orphic-Hutsul motif of the immortality of the soul and contact with the dead.

The article is yet another attempt at reading Zbigniew Herbert’s poetry from the point of view of religious motifs, with emphasis on the attitude towards Christian rituals and the practice of taking part in them. In the discussion, I refer to poems from different periods of the poet’s artistic life – beginning with 1949 up to the Epilog burzy volume. The aim of the article is to point up the complexity of the problem of religiosity in Herbert’s poetry: simplifying faith through religious stereotypes, the inner conflict between faith and the inability to find one’s place in any particular religion. The discussion was inspired by texts by Tomasz Garbol, Aleksander Fiut, Andrzej Franaszek and Stanisław Barańczak

The author of the article analyses the first three novels from Karl Ove Knausgård’s cycle My Struggle (Min Kamp). The author focuses mainly on the identity of the hero-narrator and on the critical views on contemporary culture presented in the novels. The author sees the real value of the novels in the fresh approach to the narrative forms, the construction of the first-person narrator, the re-evaluation of reality and in the ethical elements of language. The author also stresses the vitalism demonstrated by the writer. The author singles out the key formal features of this prose and confronts them with the twentieth century literary tradition as well as with contemporary culture.

The Nutcracker is a well-known short story by E.T.A. Hoffmann. In mid-19th century it was converted into a libretto and became the basis of one of the most famous ballets, still performed in theatres all over the world at Christmas time. The article attempts at showing the reader how the main elements of the work emerged. It analyzes the process of creating the musical score by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and the strictly connected choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. This allows for a comprehensive, in-depth reception of the ballet, which captivates not only the youngest audience. The author of the article also argues in favour of the huge semantic potential of the non-verbal art of dance, which can bring a range of interesting contexts and interpretations out of literature.

Columbia University announced the Adam Mickiewicz Chair in Philology, Language and Literature in May, 1948, during the Cold War. The Chair’s incumbent would be Manfred Kridl, an émigré who had left Poland 1940, and the communist Warsaw government would contribute $10,000 annually. Polish Ambassador Josep Winiewicz, with the assistance of Czeslaw Milosz, had suggested Kridl. Arthur Coleman, an Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages, and the Polish-American Congress loudly protested the appointment, “This infiltration of the Communist voice.” The Polish-American press agreed. The controversy received nationwide attention when Coleman resigned and asserted that Poland, controlled by Moscow and the Comintern, would wage a campaign of “academic infiltration” with the Mickiewicz Chair. Sigmund Sluszka, a former Coleman student, called Kridl “a noted Marxist.” The New York Timesgave the resignation front-page coverage, and the media emphasized that Columbia was “a Hot-Bed of Communism.” The fact that World War II hero, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had just become the university’s president increased public interest in the controversy, even though the decision on the Chair had been made before his arrival. Columbia’s Provost launched an extensive investigation into the accusations against Kridl and two professors, and Eisenhower presented the confidential report to the University’s Trustees. Columbia stood by hersupport of the Chair and Kridl.

The protest lasted throughout the summer, and several university officials had questioned accepting the funding from Warsaw.  While the controversy had undermined the Polish Studies program for the Polish-American and émigré communities, the Provost believed that the Adam Mickiewicz Chair and Professor Kridl contributed to the furthering of Polish-American Studies in America.