Transcripts : tradition and experiment in Polish post-war score-poems

Abstract

The article is focused on the score-poems – experimental poetic texts which use a musical score as the interpretant (in M. Riffaterre’s understanding of the notion), whether as the idea or in one of its historically developed forms. The first section of the article situates the avant-garde and post-avant-garde specimens of such texts against the backdrop of the avant-garde dialectics of tradition and experiment. In the second and more substantial part, having observed the low representation of score-poems in the Polish poetry of the interwar period, the author attempts to introduce an ordered perspective into the field of Polish post-1945 score-poems with regard to their authors’ relation to the tradition of avant-garde experiment they came in contact with. The proposed typology of interpretative styles within this tradition identifies five approaches, or models: research (M. Białoszewski, M. Grześczak, S. Czycz), continuation (S. Themerson, J. Bujnowski), access (W. Wirpsza), critique (A. Partum) and selection (R. Nowakowski, A. Sosnowski).