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Franz Kafka |Uniwersytet |Akademia |ruina |kryzys

Streszczenie

Idea uniwersytetu nigdy nie stanowiła znaczącego kontekstu dla badań twórczości Franza Kafki. To inne instytucje społeczne stawały się naturalnym polem aluzyjnych rozpoznań literaturoznawców (sąd, zakład ubezpieczeń, cesarski urząd państwowy). W niniejszym szkicu (napisanym na marginesie słynnego opowiadania Kafki Raport dla Akademii) próbujemy to zmienić. Uniwersytet (tytułowa Akademia) staje się „centralnym obiektem krytyki”, instytucją w ruinie, miejscem, gdzie nie praktykuje się badań i nie doskonali humanistycznych cnót. Wręcz przeciwnie, jakże często (konsekwentnie) zamyka się tu „wrota percepcji” i wysadza śluzy „krytycznego myślenia” – w hołdzie partykularnej grze interesów. W najgorszym przypadku – skutkiem oddziaływania tak pomyślanej Akademii staje się destrukcja wynikła z aktów tresury i upokorzenia.

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Franz Kafka |absurd |Przemiana |metamorfoza |proza groteskowa |wyobraźnia artystyczna |przestrzeń przedstawiona |parabola |symbol

Streszczenie

Przedmiotem analizy w artykule jest Przemiana (1915) Franza Kafki. Autorka podejmuje próbę uchwycenia różnorodnych aspektów fenomenu przestrzeni kafkowskiej w kontekście funkcjonowania motywu murów/ścian/sufitów w tym bodaj najsłynniejszym opowiadaniu literatury światowej. Badaczka traktuje przy tym utwór Kafki jako niedościgniony wzór artystycznego kształtowania scenerii: takiego mianowicie, które plastyczność i konkret motywów oraz relacji przestrzennych czyni swego rodzaju residuum wysublimowanych, symbolicznych znaczeń, realizujących się w pełni dopiero za pośrednictwem wyobraźni odbiorcy, w toku kontemplacyjnej lektury i towarzyszącego jej przeżycia estetycznego. Wywód prowadzi do konkluzji, że Kafka w swym parabolicznym, absurdalnym, pełnym niedopowiedzeń (a jednak zaskakująco konkretnym) opowiadaniu nie odsłania sensu historii bohatera przemienionego w stawonoga, pozwala nam jednak ten sens przeżyć i przeczuć – jako treść naszego własnego życia.

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choroba |Franz Kafka |bratobójstwo |agon |Wielka Wojna

Streszczenie

W dotychczasowych badaniach nad twórczością Franza Kafki problematyka wojenna występuje raczej zdawkowo i incydentalnie. W prezentowanym artykule, Autor wytyka zaniechanie kafkologów i próbuje wskazać możliwe kierunki belumicznej interpretacji. Szkic do portretu wojennego inspirowany jest opowiadaniem prażanina zatytułowanym Bratobójstwo. Tekst, w którym widać inspiracje biblijną historią Kaina i Abla, to zaczyn kafkowskiego myślenia o świecie zdeterminowanym przemocą, opanowanym przez krwawy konflikt. Gest podniesienia ręki przez barat na brata to prototyp masowej zagłady, wojny jako takiej, a także ludobójstwa. Wydaje się, że na tym tekstowym poligonie doświadczalnym, przećwiczył Kafka swe przyszłe projekty fabularne. Utwory autora Bratobójstwa, czytane jako wykwit wyobraźni opanowanej pożogą wojenną, uzupełniają, zaniechane wcześniej przez znawców, pole badawcze.

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Stanisław Lem |Solaris |representations |computationalism |upload

Streszczenie

The paper analyses selected philosophical aspects of Stanisław Lem’s Solaris. I argue that there is an interesting similarity between the history of “Solarist studies” –the fictional scientific discipline depicted by Lem and cognitive science. I show that both disciplines go through similar stages as they try to describe their main subject (the planet Solaris and human consciousness respectively). In the further part of the paper, I focus on two problems identified in cognitive science that can be directly related to the themes found in Solaris: the problem of the detection of intelligence and the problem of the notion of mental representations.

I finish the paper by looking at the mysterious guests that stalk the main protagonists and show that they can be understood as heuristic models that are taken into account in the theories of mind uploading.

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evil |literature and philosophy |Camus |The Fall

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The article presents the concept of evil, as developed in the literary as well as philosophical works of Albert Camus. After a short, preliminary notice on the relationship between literature and evil, the article presents two spheres, in which the problem of evil was grasped by the author of The Rebel. In the main part of the article, the complexity of the problem of evil, as represented by Jean-Baptiste Clamence from The Fall is shown. It is seen as a development of the concept of evil from The Plague, with the potency to disseminate onto others. It is also perceived, as something resulting from severe trauma of the main character. In conclusion, I claim, that the problem of evil, as experienced by Clamence may be understood as a still relevant metaphor of contemporary culture, struggling with passivity against the rise of social evil.

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cognition |poetry |philosophy |Leopardi |Philosophical Discourse |literary discourse |figures of speech |Imagination |truth

Streszczenie

Giacomo Leopardi is one of those authors whose texts oscillate on the border between literature and philosophy. It is true that Leopardi does not use traditional forms of philosophical expression, but the fact is that most of the considerations of the Italian thinker are expressed by the simultaneous conduct of two discourses: literary and philosophical. Leopardi experimented almost every form of literary expression, but he went down in history mainly as a poet, who contained a significant part of his highest beliefs in poetry. The practice of philosophizing through poetry is nothing new in literature, and the various connections between literature and philosophy are almost ancient, but the ongoing discussions in the world of Italian critics about the relationship between Leopardi and philosophy suggest that the reflective lyrics of the famous poet from Recanati are an noteworthy case. This article is a reflection on the use of figures of speech in the process of explaining the worldview by Leopardi, with particular emphasis on metaphor, and on the overall impact of the poetic medium on the presentation and shaping of adopted ideology.

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Sławomir Mrożek |Wojciech Skalmowski |trade |product |originality

Streszczenie

This article focusses on the meta-literary thread in the correspondence exchanged between Sławomir Mrożek and Wojciech Skalmowski. The latter, wondering about the actual reason why writers create literature, provocatively reduced the metaphysical dimension of a work of art to learn about its contemporary actual value; whether it is was only trade-based. Baudelaire’s work as interpreted by Walter Benjamin became a major context indicating the diversity in the perception of the analysed problem depending on historical time. The article discusses how during his exchange with Skalmowski Mrożek tried to answer the title question about the reason why he created literature, and, which is the most important, how he started focussing on elements which he previously missed or marginalised.

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Lévinas |atheism |Augustine |Rahner |Tertullian

Streszczenie

Lévinas presents atheism as the original good condition of the soul before acknowledging or rejecting God. Such description is closely linked to the notion of separation. Man is a created being, but a separated one, self-contained, though not absolute. Even if not causa sui, he may exist on his own. The description is radically different from that by Augustine, who refers to creation as the participation of man in God. Similarly, there is an almost literal contradiction between the statement by Lévinas and the words of Tertullian, claiming that the soul is Christian by nature. A comparison of Levinas’ text with the theology of Karl Rahner also points to significant differences. Rahner presents the awareness of God as a transcendental, unthematic experience. Lévinas also states that the awareness of God is unthematic, however, he does not share Rahner’s description of the experience of God as the primary transcendental experience. According to Lévinas, God comes from outside through the face of the Other. Levinas’ analyses seem highly interesting for fundamental theology and the theology of spirituality.

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identity |home |poetry |Polish literature |borderland |Wilhelm Przeczek |traveling |house |Polish national minority |Czech Cieszyn Silesia

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Wilhelm Przeczek is a Polish writer who has lived in Karviná, the Czech Republic, since he was born in 1936. He is a member of a Polish minority and he has aimed his literary output at its members and at readers in Poland. Translations into the Czech language are aimed at readers in the Czech Republic. Having made a protest against the intervention of the Warsaw Pact armies into Czechoslovakia in August 1968, W. Przeczek was not allowed to publish and he was dismissed – he had worked as an editor of a Polish paper “Głos Ludu”. In 1970–1977 he worked as an actor, stage director, and dramatic advisor of a puppet show theatre Bajka in Český Těšín, the Czech Republic.

In his article, the author deals with poems by W. Przeczek’s on the subject of journeys about Europe. The starting point is local, but a global result.

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Performance |opera |death |Abramović |Callas |icons |presence

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This essay analyses the opera project 7 Deaths of Maria Callas by Marina Abramović, premiered in Munich in September, 2020. The first section reconstructs the role that the Greek soprano played in the life of the Serbian performer, bringing the latter to a gradual sense of self-identification. Then, the thirty-years-long development of the original concept of the video piece How to Die into the actual project through its various stages is taken into account, and the stage realisation of the work is described in detail. The third section focuses on the representation of death in Marina Abramović’s performances, while section four compares Callas and Abramović’s works and lives, and their status as iconic women. The last section retraces Abramović’s artistic path which has led her from her extreme and essential performances of the 1970s to her recent experimentations with other media and to her meditation on immaterial art.

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Marshall McLuhan |Communitas |Victor Turner |David Mamet |Ariane Mnouchkin |Dionysia |Jerzy Grotowski |Laboratory Theatre |Peter Brook |Charles Marowitz |Richard Schechner |Antonin Artaud |Herbert Blau |Samuel Beckett

Streszczenie

The Theater Is always Dying traces the resilience of live theatrical performance in the face of competing performative forms like cinema, television and contemporary streaming services on personal, hand-held devices and focuses on theater’s ability to continue as a significant cultural, community and intellectual force in the face of such competition. To echo Beckett, we might suggest, then, that theater may be at its best at its dying since its extended demise seems self-regenerating. Whether or not you “go out of the theatre more human than when you went in”, as Ariane Mnouchkin suggests, or whether you’ve had a sense that you’ve been part of, participated in a community ritual, a Dionysia, or whether or not you’ve felt that you’ve been affected by a performative, an embodied intellectual and emotional human experience may determine how you judge the state of contemporary theater. You may not always know the answer to those questions immediately after the theatrical encounter, or ever deliberately or consciously, but something, nonetheless, may have been taking its course. You may emerge “more human than when you went in”.