Od kołysanki do trenów : z hermeneutyki form poetyckich

Abstract

The book includes interpretations of the poetic works from the second half of the 20th century. The perspective of reading is determined by the meaning search initiated by traditional poetic and genre forms, such as lullaby, pastiche, occasional poem, turn to addressee poetry, confessions, elegies, and laments. The analyses cause verification of the questions asked in the theoreticalliterary sketch opening the dissertation, namely In what way is historical poetics possible today? The assumption made by the author consists in the perception of literary genres as “potentially existing”, i.e. in the poems alone, in the literary practice. “The situation of genres” in the second half of the 20th century is organized around the total lack of constraints, the borderline conditions at the level of the awareness of the participants of the process of literary communication. It means as well the lack of easiness in reading the meaning of the work. Thus, the questions asked in the book concern the consistency of the contemporary “genre disintegration”, the horizon of endless semiosis. The place of benefits obtained from yet impossible system (taxonomy) was replaced with the proposal of levelling the genre with the “meaning possibilities”. Instead of systematicity, the author suggests semantics and hermeneutics of genres. Historical poetics presents itself in such a perspective as a discipline capable of historical observations of the very changeability of factors generating meaning. The factors involve those genres or discourse types which, according to a certain intertextual perspective, being the part of a given “textual organization” constitute “historical and social coordinates”. For example, Kołysanka (Lullaby) by Adam Zagajewski, apart form the effects of references to a traditional folk song, presents the meanings evoked by “histoiy and memory discourse” confronted with “the language of media and mass culture”. The whole, revolved around the elegiac tendencies, appears to be a realization of the contemporary “black lullaby”. On the basis of Dla Jana Polkowskiego (For Jan Polkowski), a poem by Marcin Świetlicki, play with poetics of the ocassional text was shown. The poetry by Jacek Podsiadło is analysed as the example of pastiche based on the poems by. Stanisław Barańczak. The chapter entitled Nieskończone Ty (Infinite You) deals with the matter of the lyrical addressee in the poetry by Julian Przyboś. In the sketch Pomnik czy wiersz? (A Monument or a Poem) the author follows the contemporary topos re-interpretations of “the text as manifestation” based on the example of Kartka (A Page) by Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz. The elegiac confessions summarize an elegiac-ironic discourse, typical of the mature poets, such as Miłosz, Herbert, Różewicz, Kozioł, and dominating in the poetry of the last half of the 20th century. The chapter on elegy was devoted to the poem by Zbigniew Herbert entitled Elegia na odejście pióra atramentu lampy (Elegy for pen ink a lamp). The question about the shape of the contemporary lament concentrates on Orfeusz i Eurydyka (Orpheus and Eurydice), a poem by Czesław Miłosz. In the last chapter, the author examines a genological status of achievements by Czeslaw Miłosz. He discusses the two so far most important and oppositional proposals in this field. According to the first one, the work by Miłosz is a religiously motivated Book. According to the second one, it is a sylvic form being the result of “the account of deconstructive strategy”. The author of this work, referring to the ancient idea of genus universum, suggests the third solution of the unconfined form of the encyclopaedic and methodic orientation directed towards the mythical origin of the whole knowledge.