This text takes up the relation of the modernist lyric (Rainer Maria Rilke and T.S. Eliot) to Martin Heidegger’s existentialist conception of time and the naturalistic anthropology it has spawned. Building on that, I argue that Rilke’s Duino Elegies not only anticipate central motifs of existentialism but, in qualified ways, part ways with that outlook. I then take up the second of Eliot’s Four Quartets to show that, more emphatically than Rilke, Eliot maintains that poetry of any substance can only be written insofar as it is grounded in an eschatological framework. East Coker in particular shows Eliot’s seeking to balance the apocalypticism of a world once again mired in global warfare with a hope, however, subdued, for mankind’s eventual redemption.

The article attempts at a presentation and an interpretation of a relatively unknown text by Joseph Conrad, namely, his Memoriał w sprawie polskiej [Note on the Polish Problem], written in Zakopane in 1914. The author of this article by interpreting the text of that document proves that it was created – to a great extent − under the influence of trialist conceptions of Galician conservatives, predominantly, an eminent lawyer from Kraków, Ph.D. Teodor Kosch.

The article discusses the problem of the popularity of lyrical pieces by Kazimierz Tetmajer among composers. The author reviews the factors which could have influenced the popularisation of selected lyric poems in the consciousness of musicians, and these include emotionality rooted in romanticism, the perfection of the poetic workshop and “musical” moulding of the linguistic material. The latter of these characteristics, analysed in the chapter “Tetmajer a muzyka” (“Tetmajer vs. Music”), is the central topic of this article. The author examines the “musicality” of Tetmajer’s lyrical pieces on the level of the theme (where the issue of music terminology arises), sound (“tunefulness,” “melodiousness,” “rhythmicality”) and construction (being inspired with a musical form of rondo in a poem Anioł Pański (Angelus)). It is probably Tetmajer’s fascination with the art of sound, having its reflection in the linguistic material, which contributed to the composers’ avid interest in his literary oeuvre.

The author of the article reflects on the issue of it not being cognitively possible to understand an alienated individual. She presents the character of the fable as an emblem of a suffering, dramatically self-aware being. Revealing the secret results in the stigmatisation of the individual with the tragedy of consciousness and suspends him in the unnamed perceptional interworld. The author analyses the philosophical contexts of the text and characterises Leśmian’s ontology. The themes of fables and Biblical rules become a rich and meaningful background to the reflections provided.

Stanisław Vincenz oeuvre, the cycle entitled On the High Uplands, in particular, enriched the borderlands’ tradition with original and separate elements. What is most important for the writer in the history of the borderlands is the multiethnic and multilinguistic social tissue. What emerges to the foreground in his cycle of essays, Dialogi lwowskie [Lviv Dialogues], is the memory of people who considered this city as the top intellectual metropolis of the multinational Polish Republic. The provincial borderland character of Kolomyia and Krivorivnia in Vincenz’s works was subject to the polyphony of cultures within local communities. His hometown, Sloboda Rungurska, became a space of artistic freedom and activity. Borderlands understood in cultural terms were an axiological category, which combined myths and phantasms of Christianity, Polishness in its most noble form and heroic life lived by the ethos of gentry and knighthood. Vincenz’s understanding of the Borderlands touches on axiology, with reference to the Jagiellonian tradition, however, it also transgresses it on the ontological and ethical planes.

The author discusses the issues touched upon in the book penned by Dorota Siwor, Traces of Myth and Ritual. On Polish Contemporary Prose – Not Only the Latest such as myth, mythologising and mythicising the presented world in the analysed books. She presents them in the context of research theories concerning myth, also, analysing the interpretative conceptions proposed by Siwor. She emphasises the quality of the publication, author’s erudition and the freedom in the selection of threads and motifs, which create a multidimensional space for combinatorial game suggesting potential Fullness, Jung’s coniunctio oppositorum – the union of form and matter, the imagined and real-world, culture and nature. She also indicates the fields on which polemics and criticism of the selection of the theories applied are possible.