“Although it did not sin, yet it was tempted by a cruel death”. On the forgotten and lesser-known Old Polish and Enlightenment poems about the death of animals

The first part of the article presents, and discusses contextually, three epigrams, unknown and unpublished at the time: animal tombstones found among seventeenth-century Old Polish silva rerum (Ossolineum Library, ms. 4502/II). These small, poetic inscriptions, one of which turned out to have been appropriated from Petrarch’s work, have provided an impulse for a wider reflection on the relationship between the inhabitants of the old Polish Republic and non-human creatures. The poems are found to show traces of lyricism, sensitivity and empathy towards a dying animal. The second part of the article is concerned with a reflection on the Enlightenment funeralia dedicated to dogs and a canary. In the lyrics presented, the death of an animal was seen as an opportunity for a client’s acknowledgement of a patron, a pretext to express sisterly love, or to convey the universal truth about one’s general character.

The form and editorial framework of Stanisław Konarski’s funeral oration on the occasion of the removal of the body of Konstancja Denhoff née Słuszka

The source material for this article is the funerary print by Stanisław Konarski, published for the occasion of the removal of the body of Konstancja Denhoff née Słuszka from Warsaw to Częstochowa (1723). The author explores the structure of the funeral oration and the themes featured by each of its seven parts, which together form an image of the deceased magnate. The author also highlights the writing characteristics of the oration. She then systematises the framework texts associated with the speech: preliminaries (an epigraph, a dedication letter directed to the son of the deceased wife of the Malbork voivode), the printed marginalia and a poem with which the booklet concludes. The author further points to the decorative elements which complete the funerary publication (initials, vignettes, decorative bands) and typographic shaping of the text of the funerary oration, in which both the differentiation of the height and shape of font, as well as the placing of individual verses in the selected parts of the oration, on the one hand display certain traits of visual textuality, and on the other, imitate inscriptions from the tradition of ancient elogia.

Around the motto from the letter of Clement XIV in the poem by Felicjan Wykowski [For the Day o the patron saint of Lady Kazimiera Brzostowska from the Ogińsi famiy, the gran Duchy of Lithuania treasurer’s wife, 1778]

The article presents the circumstances of the origins of the poem by Felicjan Wykowski, which was presented to Kazimiera Brzostowska from the Ogiński family. The article focuses mainly on the motto used by the poet. The motto came from one of the letters written by the Cardinal Ganganelli (the future Pope Clement XIV) and presents Ganganelli’s views on secular and spiritual matters. The text treats the motto as a maxim enabling the interpretation of the poem and indicates the possible ways of understanding the poem. Moreover, it presents the relationships among the nobility in the eighteenth century Lithuanian noble community, documented by the works of the poetic representative of the Piarists – Felicjan Wykowski.

Fragile presence. On the floristic-verbal note of Cyprian Norwid’s ‘Książka pamiątek’ [Book of Memorabilia]

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 Juriy 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 Deotyma, 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.

Internet meme as a media genre. History, means of expression and function in culture

The internet meme, defined by users most simply as a ‘funny picture off the internet’, is a fascinating, albeit long-ignored by academia, phenomenon of contemporary culture. The article formulates a definition of this phenomenon and describes its origins. In outlining its characteristics, the text emphasises especially those interpretations that include memes in the wide category of contemporary folklore. At the same time, the article defines memes as texts originating in an organic way, and contributing to the creation of a community of identity, on the grounds of a culture of participation. The study also presents a short analysis of stylistic devices utilised by creators of memes, complete with examples, and a critical discussion of the attempts at a utilitarian application of this media genre.

The aesthetic function of the message and its semantic role – cave painting and graffiti as art

Can Palaeolithic cave paintings and contemporary graffiti be qualified as art? Both of these graphic-semantic expressions, one from the beginnings of the development of writing, and the other from its end, are connected by the fact that they are only partly a reflection of their eras, they face a rejection of the status of an art form. The suggested analysis of the messages behind these written-graphic manifestations verifies them from the perspective of meeting aesthetic criteria, and at the same time, opts for their recognition as legitimate works of art.

On Jan Stanisław Jabłonowski’s poetic principles. Notata niektóre o poezji polskiej [Some notes on Polish poetry]

The primary goal of this article was to present an excerpt from a manuscript by Jan Stanisław Jabłonowski, found in the collection To, co szlachcic polski wiedzieć powinien (Archive of Jabłonowski of Bursztyn, reference DE-18845). The work, despite its conventionality (the text is modelled on Jesuit poetics and compendia of knowledge), reveals a number of this author’s observations, hitherto elusive and not conveyed in any of this author’s auto-thematic statements. Jabłonowski’s “Poetics” is accompanied by an introduction reconstructing the history of the manuscript’s creation. The text has been transcribed, the rules of publication have been indicated, and explanatory comments have been offered.

The history of he Abstinence hymn by Maria Konopnicka

The article discusses the publishing history of the poem Hymn abstynentów [The Abstinence Hymn] (Hymn Eleatów [The Hymn of the Eleatics]) by Maria Konopnicka. It originated in December 1905 and was reprinted many times in the press of Galicia, Greater Poland and Silesia, and was also known in the Russian state despite a printing ban. It was performed as a song during abstainers’ meetings. The poem, which expressed the ideas of Eleutheria, was quickly transformed into a more universal text useful for promoting the slogans of the emerging teetotaller movement. It experienced the height of its popularity in the years 1906–1914, and in mid1930s. These dates illustrate the development of the idea of abstinence in Poland.

‘Dear Joanna’ – the writer’s journal of Ola Watowa

The article is composed of two complementary parts: the reworked (according to
the rules of genetic criticism) and annotated, previously unpublished home manuscript by Ola Watowa, found in an archive, and an introduction containing a philological-theoretical commentary.

The draft, written up over the course of several winter days in 1970 deserves attention for many reasons: 1. Its value is that of testimony, as it is a record of personal reflections of the author, and constitutes an important part of her biography, 2. It documents the origins of the recollective book Wszystko co najważniejsze. Rozmowy z Jackiem Trznadlem [All that is most important. Conversations with Jacek Trznadel], 3. It presents Watowa in a light that is different than usual – it shows the process of her becoming an independent author, 4. It is interesting in a formal sense – it opens with a message to the addressee which suggests that we are dealing with a draft copy of a letter, and then morphs into a writer’s journal. Joanna, to whom the first words are addressed, turns out to be merely an artistic creation of Watowa, which is why this article pays particular attention to the genre status of the text.

The Application of Artificial Intelligence in Scholarly Editing: A Case Study of Wacław Potocki’s moralia

In the early 2020s, Artificial Intelligence has become 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 the 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 realised at the Jagiellonian University as part of the Digital Humanities Lab project.

The economy of literature and the Polish Enlightenment. A research reconnaissance

The article attempts to outline the potential of applying literary economics research to the literature of the Polish Enlightenment, based on an analysis of the way of understanding the essence and function of money in selected literary works, inspired by Georg Simmel’s diagnosis of the ‘calculating nature of modernity’. It also refers to newer concepts considering the nature of money as a sign (by Jochen Hörisch, Marc Shell). The areas indicated in the article as worth reflecting on in the spirit of literary economics include: images of fluctuations in the concept of value and coverage recorded in Enlightenment works; filiations of credit and broadly understood fiction; economic discourse in Enlightenment poetry; the understanding of the ‘sign’ nature of money present in the work of Ignacy Krasicki; the specificity of the literary work of writers-economists. The conducted analyses lead to the conclusion that the literary economics perspective is highly operative in the study of the Enlightenment.

Pan Tadeusz – a medium of memory: an anti-landed gentry land poem

Old Polish landed gentry literature of the second half of the eighteenth century remained active, as it was a tradition nearest to the emerging one: the Enlightenment (Powrót z Warszawy na wieś [A return from Warsaw to the country] by Franciszek Karpiński, Ziemiaństwo [Landed gentry] by Kajetan Koźmian, printed in its entirety in 1839). And yet, Pan Tadeusz [Sir Thaddeus] remains as if alienated from its familiar culture, that is, the landed gentry culture. The Dobrzyński family is the incarnation of the figure of the ploughman of the landed gentry literature. This is because, in that social order, they are a somewhat natural consolidation of the nobility (they belong to the First Estate) and peasants (they work on their own land).

As the subject of analysis and genological interpretation, Pan Tadeusz is multifaceted and generally considered an integral work (although some wrote that it is a ‘metaphysical poem’ as well as… ‘a story as if from Walter Scott, with a somewhat silly plot’ [Czesław Miłosz, Ziemia Ulro]). It represents various genres: from epic to descriptive poem, historical poem, the pastoral, historical novel, gawęda [Polish folklore storytelling], to metaphysical poem, humorous poem, and even fairy-tale. Pan Tadeusz is ‘the sum of the literary genres that were present and active in its creator’s era – as this work was not structured within the framework of just one genre’ (Kazimierz Wyka, „Pan Tadeusz”. Studia o poemacie [‘Pan Tadeusz’. Studies on the poem]). One can add votum to this list of genres – it is a secondary genre, but nevertheless particularly important for the socio-political meaning of the text.

The ennobling of the peasant as suggested by Gerwazy to Tadeusz and Zosia,
who free the peasant from serfdom, would call into question the eternal order of the nobility’s world, as it would be fundamentally contrary to the doctrine of the virtue of noble blood. This is why Pan Tadeusz can be read as an anti-landed gentry votum.

Aleksandra Żeromska, Stefan’s sister. Black legend, rehabilitation and new leads

The article is a polemic with the thesis presented by Zdzisław Jerzy Adamczyk in the draft titled Tajemnice rodzinne Stefana Żeromskiego. Rewelacje z Moskwy [Family secrets of Stefan Żeromski. Revelations from Moscow] („Literary Memoir” 2022, v. 4) and in the second volume of Dzienniki [Journals] of Żeromski published in 2023 as part of a critical edition of the Pisma zebrane [Collected works] by the writer. According to Adamczyk, the husband of Aleksandra Karpow née Żeromski, the sister of the writer, was an employee of the Russian public administration, and her son, Włodzimierz (Vladimir) Karpow, was of Polish descent. In light of new documents which the author of the article managed to locate, Michaił Karpow served in the Tsar’s army as petty officer before assuming public office; the article also presents arguments in support of a theory that the father of Żeromski’s nephew, Vladimir/Włodzimierz Karpow, was actually a Russian – Michaił Karpow.