W setną rocznicę wybuchu Wielkiej Wojny (1914–1918) w światowej humanistyce coraz bardziej zauważalne stają się próby przewartościowania wiedzy o tym wydarzeniu historycznym oraz modeli jego rozumienia. Nowe i interdyscyplinarne ujęcia tematu Wielkiej Wojny, wykorzystujące perspektywy wywodzące się z takich dziedzin, jak kulturoznawstwo, studia nad wizualnością (visual studies), literaturoznawstwo, muzeologia czy teatrologia, pojawiają się zwłaszcza w kręgu anglo-, francusko- i niemieckojęzycznym. Łączące ref eksję nad obrazami i tekstem badania nad pamięcią i postpamięcią Wielkiej Wojny (jako tekstem kultury) zajmują w nich miejsce kluczowe.

The following article discusses the impact of the First World War on the work of Stanisław
Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), and a British modernist polymath, Wyndham Lewis. Both artists took part in the combat on the Eastern and Western Fronts respectively, which proved to be a transformative experience and informed their creation during and after the war. Dissatisfied with the development of the avant-garde he had once helped to establish, Wyndham Lewis departed from mainstream modernism by exploring the legacy of wartime violence and by styling himself as a counter-cultural figure. Likewise, Witkacy swam against the tide of optimism, prevalent in the newly restored Polish state. His writings and paintings offered visions of the world shattered beyond repair, where the only possible kind of existence is in fact pseudomorphic and where happiness is achieved through a suspension of critical faculties, or by sinking to the level of beasts consciously.

 

The paper addresses the issue of an inherited memory of the Great War and traces its manifestations in contemporary (auto)biographical narratives. Two writers’ memoirs, i.e. Christopher Isherwood’s Kathleen and Frank (1971) and Doris Lessing’s Alfred and Emily, (2008) have been selected for an in-depth analysis which aims to show how the children of the survivors/casualties of the Great War have struggled with – to use Doris Lessing’s expression – “the poison running in [their] veins”, namely with an inherited memory and trauma of the trenches. Most importantly, the paper postulates that literary and cultural studies on postmemory should be expanded, both thematically and generically, and cover the memory of the Great War.
 

The article is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon of Polish theatres operating on the fronts of the Great War and discuss it as an unprecedented event in the history of both theatre and war. By means of locating it within the framework of Bakhtinian and ludic culture of laughter, the paper shows how the grotesque body moulded in the trenches of the Great War affected the modern conception of theatre and film – especially the growth and development of amateur working-class stages in Poland in the interwar period.
 

The aim of the article is to show the possibility of changing the angle from which we perceive Polish literature on World War I written in the interwar period. In Polish literary studies, there is a dominating tendency to see the Great War exclusively in terms of political event which led Poland to regain its independence; in other words, as a theme or motive of a politically oriented literature. Yet, there were many writers who considered the war a cruel and traumatic event which radically changed their ways of experiencing reality. Thus, the paper’s goal is to show how the Great War might be perceived as a modern even and how its influence on literary expression might be considered. Having provided an overview of trauma as a modern concept and basic premises of cultural trauma theory, the present paper subsequently investigates three specimens of interwar Polish literary production and discusses them within the framework of trauma studies so as to show how this kind of reading might prove beneficial to one’s perception of modern Polish literature.

The article is a first scholarly attempt to identify and consider new perspectives and research problems related to the Great War cemeteries located in Western Galicia. Research on the cemeteries’ forms, origins and ideological expression that has been conducted so far in the field of art history becomes only a prelude for further interdisciplinary deliberations which remain heavily indebted to visual studies, semiotics, performance studies and memory studies. Consequently, Galician cemeteries are seen as (1) codified texts of culture and potential places of memory, (2) texts of culture that bear generic traces of tragedy as well as (3) performative texts of culture. As a result, new hypotheses and research postulates are laid out.
 

Recenzja

Jean Echenoz, 1914, przeł. Anna Michalska, Wydawnictwo Noir sur Blanc, Warszawa 2014, ss. 74

Recenzja:

Anna Branach-Kallas, Uraz przetrwania. Trauma i polemika z mitem pierwszej wojny światowej w powieści kanadyjskiej, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu, Toruń 2014, ss. 268