The main goal of this article is to analyse literary representation of Lithuanian responsibility for Holocaust in Lithuania in the novel of Sigitas Parulkis Darkness and Company (Polish edition 2020) in the context of modern Lithuanian history politics – especially the reception style of prose on the Jewish-Lithuanian relations and the politics of memory. Vital context is also provided by the novel Izaokas (written between 1960 and 1961) by the emigrant writer Antanas Škėma, which hasn’t been translated into Polish, yet which can be treated – as the author attempts to prove – as one of the crucial hipotexts of Darkness and Company. The comparative reading of both texts leads to the conclusion that – despite society’s expectations – Darkness and Company isn’t a “revisionist” work and it isn’t supposed to be mainly read from the ethical perspective, but rather from the epistemological and psychological one instead. This stands in contrast to Izaokas, where the reader’s attention is directed towards the sphere of ethics and metaphysics; while the main theme of Izaokas – which seems to be an interesting example of an experimental modernist novel – is memory, the postmodernist Darkness and Company focuses on post-memory.

The goal of this paper is to offer an interpretation of Sen srebrny Salomei from perspective of the colonial problems embodied in the text. In my reading, Słowacki’s drama is an example of “phantasmatic colonialism”. My explanation for this phenomena is tied with my reading of Stanisław Brzozowski’s late works. In my opinion, Sen srebrny Salomei should be understood as a drama about an impossible dream of Poland undertaking the colonial endeavour.

The goal of the article, which is part of author’s postdoctoral dissertation, is to focus on one of the writers from the “Ukrainian School”, whose life and oeuvre haven’t been a subject of a more thorough study yet – Aleksander Karol Groza, also known during his lifetime as the “Ukrainian Ossian”. Through the analysis of writer’s literary works and memoirs, the author attempts to present a coherent vision of Ukraine painted by Polish writer, who had become fascinated with Ukrainian folklore. It is a vision of writer finding his inspiration at the crossroads of two different nations, two different societies, and therefore different systems of values, customs, and even religion. Groza tries to immortalise the “nation’s spirit”, whom he loves and admires. Even if he belongs to the category of minorum gentium writers, his person and oeuvre are wroth revisiting in light of the current Polish-Ukrainian sociopolitical relations. The knowledge of the past relations can help in building joint future of both nations.

According to the author of the article, the key to the interpretation of Jerzy Stempowski’s essay In Dniester Valley are the programmatic remarks of Hostowiec, who wanted to impart the generic form of Vergilian essay onto the ancient form of bucolic idyll. The author uses the convention of idyll to present the ideal coexistence model for nations living in multicultural areas, where their sense of communal identity should be based on the fundament of cultural memory presented as the counterweight to oftentimes tragic historic past of the region.

The first Polish edition of the epochal literary work Fearful Symmetry by Northrop Frye creates an occasion to reflect not only on William Blake’s place in world literature but also on his role as one of the first artists and philosophers to critically appraise the human condition in the modern world of the industrial society. It led him to – as Frye writes – demand “release of the creative power” and creation of vision of the “imaginative culture”, as such release inevitably appears as an important, if not the most important problem pertaining to society’s future. This requires new formula for spiritual experience liberated from restrictions of automatic application of “Moral Law” rules, which is inherent to institutionalised form of religion.

This article is a review of Pau Freixa Terradas’ book on reception of Witold Gombrowicz’s literary works in Argentina, which is presented in the context of the research on the Argentinian period in Witold Gombrowicz’s oeuvre, which includes his attempts at entering the local literary circulation, the posthumous reception of his work as well as his image in the local culture – especially as a literary character appearing in literary works of Argentinian writers.