Special issue of the academic journal Inscription. An Anthology 3 is a selection of the best articles selected from the last five issues of the academic yearbook Napis [Inscription]. Their main theme is the issue of memory, preserved through texts and images/photographs, which allow us to, among other things, explore the past, record emotions, communicate with ourselves and others using established cultural codes, and, finally, verify biographical information. For instance, the photographic record holds not only a sentimental value (it preserves memories) but also a factual value (it provides visual evidence).
In the introduction, these issues are briefly discussed using specific articles as examples.

The article aims at tracing the role of photography in the popular scientific narrative on the Cosmos in selected examples from the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. The following authors have been selected to represent this kind of literature: Camille Flammarion and Sir James Jeans. Particular consideration is given (from the perspective of photography as scientific proof) to the question of the ontological status of the objects of astronomy and physics research (stars, galaxies, planets, elementary particles, etc.). This status has, with the emergence of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics in the first quarter of the twentieth century, undergone a significant change due to the need to include the awareness of the researcher into physical processes. The article recalls the outlooks of prominent physicists and science theoreticians (such as Sir Arthur Eddington, Bertrand Russell, Wolfgang Pauli and other representatives of the so-called panpsychism), who argued for the granting of a distinctively understood awareness not only to the subject (the researcher), but also to the object of study. Against this backdrop, the author endeavours to portray the ambivalent role of the photography of space objects, which, on the one hand, strengthens their autonomy in the process of the humans’ experience of them, but which, on the other hand, would be written into the expansionist narrative, suggesting the possibility of a neo-colonial exploitation of the riches of Space. The conclusion presents an allegorical interpretation of a short story Inwazja [Invasion] by Stanisław Lem, which, according to the author, is excellent at summarising the issue of the boundaries of human knowledge, experienced when confronting unknowable phenomena, in a narrow ‘Galileo-Cartesian’ epistemology.

A note, intriguing in its floristic-verbal hybridity, was preserved in the so-called ‘Książka pamiątek’ [Book of Memorabilia] by Norwid from 1846. This artefact, fragile in its materiality, recorded the moment when the young poet and artist left Berlin prison. This form of expression, composed of small leaves and words, can be interpreted in the context of the romantic culture of memory, but it also constitutes a case of self-communication (according to the definition by Jurij Lotman) in a unique situation, only retrospectively equipped with the function of commemoration. The floristic-verbal note can also be juxtaposed with several other analogous messages in the body of work by Norwid (a laurel leaf for Diotyma, an ivy leaf from the grave of Zofia Węgierska). It can also be included in the rich topic of plants, significant to Norwid’s work, as it turns out, in many ways, from the early to the final years, connecting and transforming in its own way the classical and Romantic imaginarium in the spirit of the transitionary era.

Stemming from philosophical standpoints, which locate ‘passion’ in the realm of thought (Marcus Eremita, René Descartes, Hannah Arendt), this article endeavours to prove that passionate thinking was the basis of Stefan Żeromski’s creation of his own textual space of intimacy, namely journals. Because he made the phenomenon of passion the subject of this thinking (he learned the characteristics of this passion mostly from his own intimate experiences with women, and he verbalised it), the article exposes the understanding of this phenomenon by the writer, through an analysis of stylistic tropes in his journal entries. It becomes apparent that a verbal visualisation of passion brought with it an evolution of tropes he particularly favoured in creating an image of passion: similes and metaphors. These have been semantically deepened by the construction of certain enclaves of stylistic devices, which not only brought together their differing types, but most importantly accumulated them. The end result of this mechanism are suggestive images, through which Żeromski managed to verbally illustrate passion.

The figure of Henryk Goldszmit (Janusz Korczak) is the topic of many bibliographical publications. In the face of a lack of strictly scholarly works in this field, texts, in which the boundary between fact and author’s interpretation is very fluid, seem to gain more importance. The aim of the article is to point out the issues stemming from this, and to highlight the importance of bibliographical works based on archival research and reliable criticism of sources. Juxtaposing the first chapters of Korczak. Próba biografii [Korczak. An Attempt at a biography] by Joanna Olczak‑Ronikier with a documentary take on the genealogy of the Old Doctor allows one to state that even those narratives, which are the most suggestive and attractive to the reader, cannot fill the gaps in historical knowledge. Without referring to the archives, verifying arguments regarded as obvious, or without a philological reflection on the texts by Korczak, the chances to correct the errors which build up and shape the contemporary reception of the legacy of Henryk Goldszmit, diminish.

One of the more interesting phenomena in Polish cinematography is the use of the ‘photograph in film’ effect. Such a device enables the doubling of scenes and exhibiting of various photographic themes. A picture within a picture is an intermingling of moving and static image. Such constructions have an influence on various ways of storytelling, changes of timelines and spaces, as well as unexpected twists in a work of film. The selected photographic portraits in film, of Teresa Kociełło and Bogumił Niechcic (Noce i dnie [Nights and Days]), Władysław Niwiński (Polskie drogi [The Passions of Poland]), Barbara Lawinówna and Łukasz Zbożny (Dom [The House]), are connected by the tradition of family photography, black and white aesthetic, as well as by their links to socio-historical events (the outbreak of World War I, World War II, post-war effects of the Warsaw Uprising). The diverse interpretations of the theme of photography, however, set various perspectives in motion: a psychological one (Sigmund Freud), anthropological one (Hans Belting), and, most importantly, those relating to the theory and aesthetics of photography (Roland Barthes, François Soulages, Marianna Michałowska). Photographic portraits in film also refer to different cultural, historical and social contexts (photography as memento, photography as trace, photography as prop), as well as presenting a complex mechanism of how the images of human memory function (remembering – reconstructing, fading – erasing).

In the early 2020s, Artificial Intelligence became extremely popular. Due to new technology, more processes from various fields are subject to automation every day. Editing is no different, as concepts of utilising the feats of engineering to create scholarly editions are voiced ever more confidently. In the international community of Humanists, there is an ongoing debate on the possibilities for creative uses of generative artificial intelligence and machine learning in work with text.
The first part of the article portrays the current state of scholarly editing in the digital age. The second part is devoted to a case study of utilising machine learning for the automatic generation of a transliteration of the seventeenth-century manuscript of Moralia by Wacław Potocki. The text concludes with a discussion on the ethics of editing aided by AI. The endeavour is carried out at the Jagiellonian University as part of the Digital Humanities Lab project.