Bianca Looks from above the Book: Readings on the Margin of Bruno Schulz’s Ex-Libris for Stanisław Weingarten

The essay traces correspondences between the elements of the 1919 Pierrot ex-libris and the books from Weingarten’s collection which, with time, included and gave privileged position to the works of Bruno Schulz. Among the authors referred to are Rainer Maria Rilke, Alfred Kubin, and Jules Laforgue (in the critical appreciation of Jan Szarota)

“An Inner Comprehension of the Pueblo Indian’s Point of View”: Carl Gustav Jung’s 1925 Visit to Taos, New Mexico

Carl Jung paid a short visit to Taos, New Mexico, in January 1925. A brief account of his stay at the Pueblo appeared in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, edited by Aniela Jaffe in 1963. Remembering his conversations with Mountain Lake (Antonio Mirabal), Jung wrote of the confrontation between the “European consciousness,” or the “European thought,” with the Indian “unconscious.” My article provides a reading of Jung’s text as a meeting ground of the aesthetic, emotional, visionary and of the analytical, rational, explanatory. Like many other European and Anglo-American visitors to Taos Pueblo, Jung rediscovers its capacity to mirror the inner needs of the visitor; he examines the significance of the encounter with the Southwestern landscape and with the Pueblo Indians’ religious views in terms of self-reflection and of the return to the mythical. As Carl Jung’s “inner comprehension” of the Pueblo Indian’s philosophy is mediated through language, aware both of its desire and its inability to become liberated from the European perspectives, Mountain Lake’s attitude towards his visitor from Switzerland remains ultimately unknown; Mountain Lake does, however, communicate his readiness to assume the archetypal role of a teacher and a spiritual guide whose insights reach beyond the confines and mystifications of language. According to Jung’s account, during this brief encounter of the two cultures, he and his Indian host experienced a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment, the sources of which, as they both understood them in their own individual ways, resided in the comprehension of universal sharing

'Under Kilimanjaro:' Homesickness for the Wild and Hemingway’s African Dressing Gown

Mirosław Mierni

Cabeza de Vaca, Estebanico, and the Language of Diversity in Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account

Published in 1542, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s La relación is a chronicle of the Pánfilo de Narváez’s 1527 expedition to the New World in which Cabeza de Vaca was one of the four survivors. His account has received considerable attention. It has been appreciated and critically examined as a narrative of conquest and colonization, a work of ethnographic interest, and a text of some literary value. Documenting and fictionalizing for the first time in European history the experience of travelling/trekking in the region which now constitutes the Southwest in the United States, Cabeza de Vaca’s story testifies to the sense of disorientation, as well as to the importance of psychological and cultural mechanisms of responsiveness and adaptability to a different environment. What allows the Moroccan-American contemporary writer Laila Lalami to follow that perspective in her book The Moor’s Account (2017) is an imaginative transfer of the burden and satisfaction of narrating the story of the journey to the black Moroccan slave whose presence in the narratives of conquest and exploration was marginal. In Lalami’s book, Estebanico becomes the central character and his role is ultimately identified with that of a writer celebrating the freedom of diversity, one who survives to use the transcultural experience of the past creatively in ways well suited to the needs of the current moment

Temat fizycznej mocy słów w noweli Edgara Allana Poe „Zagłada domu Usherów"

Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 dofinansowane zostało ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej nauk

Father and Schulz: On a Drawing from the Cover of „The Catalogue of Stanisław Weingarten’s Library”

The text traces imaginary patterns of correspondences between Bruno Schulz’s fictions and the story of the antiquarian bookstore Słowo (“The Word”), as remembered by the son of its founder and owner, an admirer and collector of Schulz’s graphic works, Henryk Maszewski. From that perspective, Maszewski’s chance acquisition (in the1950s) of The Catalogue of Stanisław Weingarten’s Library, illustrated by Bruno Schulz, gains an aura of an unquestionable “missionary” privilege. Relevant correspondence between Henryk Maszewski and Jerzy Ficowski is fragmentarily quoted. The last section of the text offers an introduction to possible interpretations of Schulz’s drawing from the front cover of Weingarten’s Catalogue. Part of the mythology of the bookstore, which operated in Łódź in the years 1945–1989, the barrel bearing Schulz’s initials on which the figure of a “dreamer-wanderer” stands astride, symbolizes a means of escape from the mental enslavement and boredom of the communist times. It may still provide means of escape from the falsehood of xenophobic and nationalistic propaganda of our times. Occasioned by the guiding theme of the 2019 Conference in Gdańsk: Schulz-beyond-Drohobych, the text is the author’s venture beyond the personal memory to meet the expectations of the conference organizers and participants

Ike i jego krowa: interpretacja fragmentu powieści Faulknera Zaścianek

Tematem artykułu jest motyw miłości Ike’a Snopes’a do krowy w drugim rozdziale księgi trzeciej powieści Williama Faulknera Zaścianek (The Hamlet). Apoteoza uczucia, jakim umysłowo upośledzony chłopiec darzy zwierzę, postrzegana jest w kontekście ambicji języka metafory do poszukiwania utraconego stanu jedności z naturą. Nostalgicznej w igi towarzyszy świadomość sztuczności i teatralności środków służących jej przywołaniu. Temat idealistycznego przedstawienia zwierzęcia stanowi zaproszenie do gry literackich odniesień i usprawiedliwia odczytanie fragmentu powieści Faulknera jako ilustracji myśli krytycznej Jacquesa Derridy.Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 dofinansowane zostało ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej naukę