The English translation of Pan Tadeusz and how the event reverberated in Poland

The article discusses a variety of opinions related to the first English translation of Adam Mickiewicz’s poem Pan Tadeusz published in 1885 by Maud Ashurt Biggs (1857-1933). The main point for the author is to analyse the scope of the Polish critics’ opinions and attitudes towards this translation. Some of them were issued by well-known experts in literary translation at the time (for example Stanisław Tarnowski), as well as critics who regularly published notes on British literature and culture in Polish periodicals (Edmund Naganowski). The article points out that the translation of Pan Tadeusz triggered neither numerous, nor enthusiastic reviews; it did, however, contribute to the publication of several interesting reflections related to poetry translation

Local Development and the Role of Small Towns in Space Organisation in Contemporary Poland

Published in: Origin Spatial Development of Contemporary Poland in Łódź University Geographical Research, edited by T.MarszałThe majority of small towns are undertaking efforts to redefine their role and position in the spatial structure of the region through finding new opportunities for growth and for improvement of local communities’ living conditions. The choice of appropriate growth strategy based on the right diagnosis of the situation, taking advantage of the opportunities and mobility of the local community will be decisive for the position of each town in the settlement network. Activation of small towns must take place on many planes – direct efforts to forward socio-economic growth and improve spatial development should be accompanied by increased environmental awareness. The main positive effects of the past two decades of transformations in small towns include greater sense of responsibility for the neighbourhood and enhanced quality of urban space, particularly the improvement of urban infrastructure and housing conditions

Confronting the Past. Trauma, History and Memory in Wajda’s film

Confronting the Past. Trauma, History and Memory in Wajda’s filmHistorical films are important carriers of collective memory, and as a genre historical films can activate both strong feelings and strong debate. Historical fiction films often tell very accurate and almost documentary stories, but fictional films have the freedom to make historical reality in quite another way than factual historical films. This article deals with some of the most important historical film genres and uses a general theory of genres, emotions, memory and history to analyse the historical films of Polish film director Andrzej Wajda, especially those made post 1989. Dealing with both his heritage drama Pan Tadeusz (1999) and critical historical drama Katyń (2007), the article analyses the ways in which Wajda uses historical narratives to comment on both history and contemporary society, and how this strategy is reflected in all his historical films. The article argues that the traumatic and contrast-filled history of Poland makes historical films especially important and interesting as a critical part of public debate and the reframing and reinterpretation of the past

Complex network analysis of literary and scientific texts

We present results from our quantitative study of statistical and network properties of literary and scientific texts written in two languages: English and Polish. We show that Polish texts are described by the Zipf law with the scaling exponent smaller than the one for the English language. We also show that the scientific texts are typically characterized by the rank-frequency plots with relatively short range of power-law behavior as compared to the literary texts. We then transform the texts into their word-adjacency network representations and find another difference between the languages. For the majority of the literary texts in both languages, the corresponding networks revealed the scale-free structure, while this was not always the case for the scientific texts. However, all the network representations of texts were hierarchical. We do not observe any qualitative and quantitative difference between the languages. However, if we look at other network statistics like the clustering coefficient and the average shortest path length, the English texts occur to possess more clustered structure than do the Polish ones. This result was attributed to differences in grammar of both languages, which was also indicated in the Zipf plots. All the texts, however, show network structure that differs from any of the Watts-Strogatz, the Barabasi-Albert, and the Erdos-Renyi architectures

Literary Competitions Organised by the Ministry of Culture and Arts in 1949–1950 in the Light of Archive Records

The subject of this paper are these literary competitions organized by Ministry of Culture and Arts in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Analysys of the materials from archivesenabled to tackle the issues: these competitions are one of the many aspect of stalinism offensive. Competitions encouraged writers for moving problems of socialist realism, they enforced artists for submission in accordance with Government of country.In article characterized six competitions. Most curious was “Third competition on mass song”, in which took part important writer Tadeusz Różewicz

Koncept Poljskoga biografskoga leksikona: njegova povijest i urednički izazovi

The aim of the article is to present a concept of the Polish Biographical Dictionary (Polski Słownik Biograficzny, PSB), which has been published in Krakow since 1935 as a multi-volume publication of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU), and realised by the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the PAN. Over 28,000 biographies of people associated with Poland (and with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Commonwealth of Both Nations, and their fiefs), who lived or operated in the country and abroad from the time of legendary Duke Popiel (9th century) to 2000, have been published in 52 volumes so far. The concept of the PSB is presented in the historiographic context as well as the context of contemporary problems and challenges that the PSB is facing.Cilj je ovoga rada predstaviti koncepciju Poljskoga biografskoga leksikona (Polski Słownik Biograficzny, PSB), koji je izdavan u Krakovu od 1935. kao višesveščano izdanje Poljske akademije znanosti (PAN) i Poljske akademije umjetnosti i znanosti (PAU), a koje provodi Institut za povijest Tadeusz Manteuffel PAN. Dosad je u 52 sveska41 izdano više od 28 000 biografija osoba povezanih s Poljskom (kao i Velikom Kneževinom Litvom te Poljsko-Litavskom Unijom i njihovim lenima) koje su živjele ili djelovale u zemlji i inozemstvu od vremena legendarnoga vojvode Popiela (IX. st.) do 2000. Koncept PSB-a predstavljen je u historiografskom kontekstu, kao i u kontekstu suvremenih problema i izazova s kojima se suočava PSB

Nieznany "Pan Tadeusz"

Przedruk z "Forum Akademickiego" nr 12, 2018.Recenzja: Maria Prussak, Teresa Rączka-Jeziorska, "Nieznany autograf Adama Mickiewicza. Dwie strony Inwokacji „Pana Tadeusza”, Wydawnictwo Instytutu Badań Literackich PAN, Warszawa 2018

Censorship Towards the Subject of the Warsaw Uprising in Belles-Lettres in 1956–1958

Right from the beginning, the subject of the Warsaw Uprising was often manipulated or even entirely erased from public discourse under the Stalinist regime. It was only after the liberalization of culture and the easing of censorship-related repressions that the said topic returned in literature. The paper focuses on the censorship bureau’s approach to the image of the Uprising presented by writers. Moreover, it attempts to specify – on the basis of specific examples – the kind of content that was accepted, rejected or amended. The juxtaposition of censors’ documents and the content of the published works allows for the examination of the depth of censors’ interventions and their methods of manipulating historical facts. Those areas of special interest include: presentation of the division among the insurgents who were supposed to belong either to the brave ordinary soldiers or the passive leadership, as well as the attitude towards the People’s Army, the First Polish Army, the Home Army or the Red Army, with special regard for its passiveness during the Uprising