Volume 22 Issue 2

2025

Publication date: 29.10.2025

Description

The publication of this issue was financed by the Jagiellonian University in Kraków – Faculty of Polish Studies.

Cover design: Paweł Sepielak

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Editorial team

Editor-in-Chief Dr hab., prof. UJ Łukasz Tischner

Secretary Dr hab. Dorota Siwor

Editor of issue Dr hab., prof. UJ Łukasz Tischner

Issue content

Uwagi wstępne

Łukasz Tischner

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 22 Issue 2, 2025, pp. 265-266

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.25.015.22079

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„Piszą się wiersze, piszą same…” A Study of Tadeusz Nowak’s Manuscripts – a Reconnaissance and a Close-Up

Dorota Siwor

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 22 Issue 2, 2025, pp. 267-285

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.25.016.22080

The article takes up a hitherto undeveloped topic – the study of Tadeusz Nowak’s manuscripts collected at the Museum of Literature in Warsaw and the Municipal Public Library in Tarnów. The author briefly mentions the contents of both collections, analyses the writer’s habits related to the creation of texts, provides information on the material side of writing. She also compares the manuscript of one of the poems with the published version, demonstrating the interpretative benefits of analysing the manuscript record.

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Religion, Poetry and Compassion. On Józef Wittlin and Czesław Miłosz

Łukasz Tischner

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 22 Issue 2, 2025, pp. 286-303

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.25.017.22081

The essay invites us to look at the poetry of Józef Wittlin and Czesław Miłosz, noting the religious potential of compassion as a response to the scandal of evil. Józef Wittlin – a soldier in First World War and later a victim of the anti-Semitic attacks – was particularly sensitive to the manifestations of cruelty and violence in the world. Likewise – fifteen years younger than Wittlin – Miłosz, who experienced first-hand the oppression of Nazi and Communist totalitarianisms. Although their poetry is very different, they both can be named “sick souls,” as William James defined religious people who confront their faith with evidence of pain, loss, evil and suffering in the world. The concept of compassion (in the case of Wittlin and Miłosz, originally borrowed from Schopenhauer) seems to be rather secular, but their poetry suggests that it gets theological overtones and becomes similar to agape, as understood by Charles Taylor in his reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan (A Secular Age). The article primarily refers to the two poems by Wittlin (Pain of a Tree, The Lament of the Sacrificial Ram) and some of Miłosz’s late poems.

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Anatomy of Shame. Stanley Cavell’s Reading of King Lear

Michał Filipczuk

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 22 Issue 2, 2025, pp. 304-321

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.25.018.22082

This text deals with Stanley Cavell’s approach to the problem of skepticism in his reading of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, contained in the essay The Avoidance of Love.² The originality of this proposition lies in the fact that the motivation for Lear’s behavior is considered impenetrable, incomprehensible even to himself. In other words, Lear does not understand his own behavior in the first scene of the play – his attitude of rejection and disapproval of Cordelia’s conduct, expressed in his attitude of Avoidance (refusal) – triggering his anger, and thus, setting in motion the mechanism of action. At the same time, Avoidance stems from Lear’s refusal of the love he feels for Cordelia – this love, opening up the horizon of possibilities that are the domain of psychoanalysis, violates social taboos and elicits in Lear an attitude of denial and refusal. In rejecting Cordelia’s love (and his own love for Cordelia), Lear turns out to be a narcissistic skeptic, seeking to avoid the sense of dependence on the Other, which is one of the risks of love.

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Creative Trauma, Life-Giving Poison: ‘Destructive Plasticity’ and ‘Trans-Corporeality’ in Elżbieta Łapczyńska’s “On How the Arsenic-Eaters Bid Farewell to Death” and Lina Meruane’s Fruta Podrida

Klaudia Cierluk

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 22 Issue 2, 2025, pp. 322-338

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.25.019.22083

This paper explores the intersection of trauma and environmental thought by analyzing two literary works focused on the experiences of working-class women. Drawing on Catherine Malabou’s concept of destructive plasticity and Stacy Alaimo’s notion of trans-corporeality, the paper argues that trauma can foster new identities and relationships with toxic substances in ways that challenge conventional ideas about poison and environmental harm. Elżbieta Łapczyńska’s short story centers on women traumatized by the war who consume arsenic to fortify their bodies, while Lina Meruane’s novel depicts a protagonist with diabetes who refuses treatment, allowing her body to decompose. Both texts explore how trauma increases openness to entanglements with harmful matter, subverting the traditional view of poison as purely destructive. By focusing on marginalized, working-class women in peripheral literary contexts, the paper examines the political and environmental implications of their actions. Through an interdisciplinary lens that combines trauma theory and material eco-criticism, the paper challenges the idea of trauma as solely destructive, proposing instead that it can be transformative. Additionally, the paper interrogates how toxins travel through bodies, disrupting socio-political structures and creating new relational networks between human and non-human agents. The works of Łapczyńska and Meruane illustrate how trauma allows for alternative interactions with the material world, blending the personal with the environmental, and blurring the boundaries between life, death, and agency. By highlighting the roles of poison and toxicity in these narratives, the paper offers a nuanced perspective on trauma, identity, and environmental entanglement in contemporary literature.

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Marzenia o historii literatury

Magdalena Amroziewicz

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 22 Issue 2, 2025, pp. 339-362

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.25.020.22084

It has been said for a few decades already that researching literature history requires consent to diverse re-evaluations, dilemmas and crises. The status of this research field is presented as unstable to such a degree that writing a historic-literary monograph seems a less daunting task than anchoring one’s own hypotheses in a convincing methodology. Is it then so that the current zeitgeist is not conducive to the historical thinking? It might seem so. In this situation, the presence of dreams of synthesis is an extraordinary thing – one that is not only historic-literary in nature. The author’s preliminary remarks are an invitation to a conversation on the consequences of such dreams.

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Wytwarzanie miłości w Dzienniku Gombrowicza

Paulina Sokólska

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 22 Issue 2, 2025, pp. 363-379

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.25.021.22085

The subject of the article is the portrayal of love in Witold Gombrowicz’s Diary. The author illustrates how love is addressed in relation to issues of form and authenticity, contextually drawing on selected Western concepts of love. Additionally, she aims to depict the painful inner conflict experienced by the narrator, which arises from the incompatibility between a love tainted by violence as well as artificiality and its desired vision as a pure value.

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„Lubiłam o obrazie napisać coś więcej”. Konteksty malarskie w wybranych wierszach Bożeny Fabiani

Małgorzata Peroń

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 22 Issue 2, 2025, pp. 380-395

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.25.022.22086

The article analyzes selected poems by Bożena Fabiani – historian, popularizer of knowledge in the field of art history). The source of inspiration for most of her poems is primarily the Bible. A small part of her rich oeuvre refers to art. Poems inspired by the European painting reveal significant connections with Bożena Fabiani’s books on art (series “Gawędy o sztuce” [“Tales about Art”]). The degree of references to specific works of art varies: from mentioning the name of the painter in the title to using the gesture of the figure shown on the canvas in the composition of the painting. The paintings that inspire the poet are biblical and genre scenes, most often multi-figured. Fabiani draws attention to the details of everyday life that are hidden in the details of the painting. The poems take the form of dialogues or monologues of characters invisible in the painting or placed outside its center. This choice of topic: everyday life (e.g. the circumstances of the creation of the painting) is also close to the poet’s scientific interests.

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Adam Zagajewski's eightieth birthday

Myśląc z Adamem Zagajewskim

Nikola Madžirov

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 22 Issue 2, 2025, pp. 396-402

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.25.023.22087

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Odwaga opiewania świata

Yevhenii Monastyrskyi

Konteksty Kultury, Volume 22 Issue 2, 2025, pp. 403-405

https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.25.024.22088

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Files to download

Title pages & imprint PDF Contents PDF About the authors PDF

Słowa kluczowe: Tadeusz Nowak, manuscripts, archives, Pieśń o pisaniu wierszy [Song about Writing Poems], Miłosz, Wittlin, compassion, theology, philosophy, ethics, Cavell, Shakespeare, literary scepticism, tragedy, philosophy of literature, trauma s tudies, eco-criticism, contemporary literature, Polish literature, Latin American literature, destructive plasticity, trans-corporeality, Catherine Malabou, Stacy Alaimo, Elżbieta Łapczyńska, Lina Meruane, literature history, monograph, synthesis, didactics, meta-history, historical thinking, literary studies, Kazimierz Wyka, Gombrowicz, love, Diary, philosophy of Form, ethics, Polish poetry, ekphrasis, religious poetry, the Bible, the art

Funding information

The publication of this issue was financed by the Jagiellonian University in Kraków – Faculty of Polish Studies.