Obrazy i wiersze : z zagadnień interferencji sztuk w polskiej poezji współczesnej

Abstract

The dissertation entitled Images and poems. On the issues of interference of arts in the Polish contemporary poetry is a particular answer to the extraordinary development of research into ecphrase and its derivative types that has taken place in the last decades in literary studies. I am particularly interested in the matter of interference (or oscillation) that takes place between the works of art (especially between images) and poetry, thus their mutual, based on coexistence, overlap, and inseparable concomitance of works emerging from the order of natural and artificial signs. Considering these issues, I often refer to the notions of “inexpressibility” and “inexpressible”, which — in connection to the problem of interference of arts taken up in the article — appear as crucial questions in modern literature and — in effect — appear in my whole argument. I try to consequently depart the problem of “intersemiotic translation” or “intersemiotic transposition”. Regardless of any typologies, any theories of correspondence and kinship of arts, a single text with its reference to image or images counts most. The issue of referentiality its obviously describable in typological categories, yet each work includes something that determines its uniqueness, its individuality among other works, within literature — it is the aspect that engages me the most. Works, which became the subject of analysis and interpretation, as well as exemplification of individual phenomena, were chosen in such a way as to emphasize this aspect of coexistence, of inseparable relation between the works belonging to different systems of meaning, and yet fulfilling themselves in an obvious way. The analytical part of this dissertation is opened with a fragment devoted to known and widely discussed poems of Julian Przyboś, where the Parisian cathedral Notre Dame is the subject of reference. A curious phenomenon of ecphrasing occurs here. Przyboś appears here yet on another purpose — the poetry of the Awangarda Krakowska makes a tradition crucial to such a vast phenomenon as contemporary Polish poetry is, he introduces this type of poetry to the widely comprehended modernity. The problem of the very ecphrase was discussed in a separate chapter together with an original, extremely interesting phenomenon of hypotyposis. In this part of the work, I try to point — using selected examples (Widok Delft by Adam Czerniawski, Widok Delft by Adam Zagajewski, Lorenzo Lotto by Krzysztof Lisowski, fragments of Poemat bukoliczny by Aleksander Wat, and Fuga by Rafał Wojaczek) — the way in which these phenomena function in the Polish contemporary poetry. The chapter entitled Image as an interpreter — referring to semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce and intertextual concepts of Michael Riffaterre — touches upon a specific re‑reading of the widely discussed “poems with Breugel”, which often appeared in the contemporary poetry. Such perspective of reading enables to indicate one of the possible ways of generating meanings in poetic texts, but also to reveal interesting and new shades of meanings in already read and discussed works. Czesław Miłosz and his “poems with images” occupy a special place in my work. I re‑interpret the famous poem Nie więcej and concentrate on these particular “poems with images”, which appear in his later output and are organized in a form of a multipart poems. Selected works of Miłosz take up the problems associated with representation and limited possibilities of expression. The last part of the work brings detailed analysis of the so‑called “third sense”, which was widely discussed by Roland Barthes in his works. Using the semiotics of the “third sense” I attempt at reading the poems of Adam Zagajewski, especially those, which include references to paintings of Vermeer. Careful reading of works (not only poetic ones) of the author of Jechać do Lwowa leads to surprising analytical and interpretative conclusions. Research into ecphrasity enables a reflection on the nature of a work of art; such reflection is expressed in the categories of modern esthetics. It means that a work of art appears to be an autonomous object — a representation of representation, a pure performance, a self‑referential object. Thus the study of a description of a work of art becomes a study of reflection in rules of artistic comprehension and representation in general, however especially the experienced reality. I have tried to make the analysis of meta‑language artistic “rhetoric of presence” a central point of my research into ecphrase and ecphrasity. With such an assumption, the next variants of this research were: — ideological instrumentalization of intertextual calling of an image in the function of the ideological message of the author (in the chapter entitled Image as an interpreter), — criticism of the artistic presentation and reflection on epistemological conditioning of a work of art (in the chapter entitled Poetry as an interpretation of art), — inaccessibility of the work of art treated as an allegorical example of inaccessibility of the beyond‑human world (in the chapter entitled “The Third Sense” — Vermeer of Adam Zagajewski).