The aim of this preliminary insight is to explicate the relationships between the masculinities of Italian, Russian and Polish futurisms. The article, by examining the manifestos and poetry of Polish futurists, shows an inclusive and prospective masculinity project proposed by this movement. Another important objective of this research is to propose an interpretation of the masculinist ideologies of futurism as the “masculinities of tomorrow,” which should be valid in the future and should act as a cure for the peripheral status of the region and variously defi ned “crisis.”

The article is an attempt to present diff erent modalities of men’s communities in Józef Czechowicz’s short prose texts, which were created many years after and on the basis of his experiences during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921. The author partly refers to Czechowicz’s biography and some memories of him, and also uses the concept of “homosocial desire” and Georges Bataille’s anthropologic theories. He aims to describe a wide spectrum of Czechowicz’s after-war fantasies about male bonds: brotherhood, fi ctional in-war family model (with a subconscious search for a symbolic Father), friendship and homoerotic partnership.

The article discusses the diarist projects of André Gide and Witold Gombrowicz. It is not only a commentary on the issues of Gombrowicz’s inspiration raised several times by critics, but also an attempt to read Gide’s pioneer work in the “Gombrowicz” optics, i.e. with special attention to the question of interpersonal relations. In addition, the author analyzes the homosexual discourse of both authors, especially its performative character (because homosexuality concerns both didactics and poetics).

Antinomies of Masculinity and the Eroticized Gaze on a Male Body in Agnieszka, córka Kolumba by Wilhelm Mach
Wilhelm Mach’s novel Agnieszka, córka Kolumba [Agnes, Columbus’ Daughter] (1965) has now largely been forgotten, like the author’s other works, yet, in the 1960’s it used to be highly controversial and provoked numerous arguments. This paper brings the novel back into focus and analyzes the ambiguous and internally incongruous concept of masculinity it presents. The analysis concerns the novel both in the wider contexts of the ideological and aesthetic discussions of the 1960s, and in relation to the author’s earlier works. The author’s personal view on the form of a novel was highly interesting as he conceptualized a well-crafted novel as a “gendered” one: the “masculine” dimension of the epic had to be balanced by the “feminine” element encapsulated in the concentration on details, emotionality, and attentiveness. These ideas being put into practice, “the feminine” in Agnieszka is realized by the romantic plot and eroticization of the constructed-as-feminine gaze on the masculine body, yet under the heteronormative and patriarchal regime the eroticization of this body disrupts the “masculine” narrative and results in an artistic failure and the omnipresent misunderstanding of the author’s intentions.

The aim of the text is the examination how the homosexual experience connected with natural spaces such as beach, park, dessert is reflected in diaries and novels by T.S. Lawrence, Witold Gombrowicz, and Michał Witkowski. The author comes to the conclusion that liminal spaces undermine the binaries „nature/culture”, „norm/anomie”, „primordial/fabricated”. Nature defined as „queerness” (the notion coined by C. Sandilands) seems in these works to play the role of counter-narrative of modern culture, establishing a different order of moral values and new, extended (non-anthropocentric) subjectivity that connects species within a set of interactions between plants, water, sand, climate factors.

The article presents remarks on the book by Błażej Warkocki Pamiętnik afektów z okresu dojrzewania. Gombrowicz – queer – Sedgwick [Memoirs of Aff ects from Adolescence: Gombrowicz – Queer – Sedgwick]. It reconstructs the most important methodological and thematic patterns of interpretation proposed in the discussed monograph. These patterns, presented by Błażej Warkocki from the perspective of the queer reading of Freud’s psychoanalysis, the concept of “paranoid gothic” by Sedgwick and Gombrowicz’s subversions of heteronormative masculinity, outline a research horizon absent from Gombrowicz studies. Homophobia remains one of the most important issues within this new research horizon.

The article is a review of the Gender of the Henpecked Husband. Queer Masculinities in the Polish Prose of the 19th and 20th Century Tomasz Kaliściak’s. The author emphasizes the originality of the interpretations presented in this book. Kaliściak in the interpretation of Ferdydurke for the first time uses the theoretical categories developed by the so-called rectal return.