The article is a reflection on the need to change contemporary stories, which has long been demanded by researchers applying the Anthropocene narrative. From the main article to the work of Donna Haraway or Anna Tsing, Ewa Bińczyk, Ewa Domańska and Małgorzata Sugiera, the author of the article argues that such a change is not only necessary, but possible. According to a Silesian researcher, the laboratory of a new language and stories alternative to traditional narratives should be enriched with practices of new readings of texts that are now included in canonical registers. A key role in reading that would overcome the stagnation of the Anthropocene would be the methodology of critical hope (Domańska) and active hope (Macy, Johnstone), allowing us to re-situate ourselves in closeness to the Earth and in alliance with its ecosystems.

The context of considerations includes alarming data presented in the reports of natural scientists showing so called planetary boundaries. The data shows that we are on the verge of probable destabilization of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and lithosphere. These are being discussed within a debate on the Anthropocene – the human epoch. The article, facing these unprecedented challenges, in line with the broader postulate of socializing a discussion on the Anthropocene, asks a question on how to reflect on justice. Theoretical ambitions of the text are limited as its aim is a preliminary analysis of the problem of justice in selected contexts, in light of particular challenges of the planetary environmental crisis in the 21st century. The following article underlines the advantages of the systemic thinking on justice, as well as points out that it involves many other problems of irreversibility, progress, equality, responsibility, guilt or intergenerational rights. Additionally, the text presents selected difficulties in reflection on justice, among others, on the example of incorrect assumptions of the planetary boundaries model. The article shows that humanistic sensitivity, especially in fields such as ecological economy is necessary to avoid such mistakes in the future.

In her article, Monika Rogowska-Stangret reflects on the kind of humanities that might be adequate for the epoch of the Anthropocene, when both the conditions of living on the planet Earth and traditional modes of thinking have been destabilized. Drawing inspiration mainly from two trends in contemporary philosophy, critical posthumanism and feminist new materialisms, the author suggests relational thinking as a response to the Anthropocene. She characterizes relational thinking (sometimes referred to as thinking (with) the thicket) with reference to one example, epigenetics. She defines thinking (with) the thicket and explains the notion of epigenetics and its concerns. Finally, she addresses three challenges that humanities are faced with in the Anthropocene, thinking with “unruly edges” (thinking outside dualism and “modern constitution”), thinking (with) scales, and, finally, thinking the human being outside the poisoner-savior logic.

In response to Steve Mentz’s call from Break Up Anthropocene (2019) to multiply versions and perspectives of the latest era in the history of Earth, the article proposes a a possible story of colonization as terraforming, regarding its modern effects as the curse of the Argonauts. Two novels, namely, Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon (1862) and G.H. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898), as well as Heiner Müller’s theatre text Verkommenes Ufer Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten (1982) provide a material for such an understanding of the process of colonization. The article makes use of the inspirations taken from Amitav Ghosh’s essays The Nutmeg’s Curse (2021), but based on historical facts of the nutmeg’s curse, it clearly juxtaposes a fictional curse of the Argonauts. As the proposed reading of Müller’s triptych shows, the literary fictions in the Anthropocene often provide materials for stories other than factions of mainstream historians, as they dig out what is still hidden by the relations based on the approved facts. It is also because of the fact that going beyond human measures they show disasters that are not allowed by the representation paradigm.

The article deals with the notion of exosomatization, treating as a starting point a description of Alfred Lotka’s “exosomatic evolution” (evolution of out-of-body organs – machines, devices, instruments, platforms). It shows why this notion is necessary to capture a technological moment of the Anthropocene in a wider perspective than the environmental one. If the Anthropocene is indeed “a human epoch”, it is also a time of deep anthropotechnological transformation. In order to describe its wide and far-reaching effects, criticism of an anthropological way of thinking prevailing in the environmental reflection on the Anthropocene is not enough. Destabilization of planetary systems as a result of human activities goes in tandem with a brutal interference of computational technology into social systems, bodies and structures of mental health derived therefrom. The author argues that these two types of disruptions – a digital and planetary disruption – are systemically connected and, hence, it is worth considering them together while discussing solutions to problems confronted in the “climate endgame” (Kemp et al., 2022).

The aim of the article is to examine the functioning of translation conceived both as an activity at the interface of various communication systems, and a linguistic and cultural process taking place in a conceptual space framed by the discourses of ecology, climate catastrophe and the Anthropocene. The article’s point of departure is the discussion of a concrete literary fragment in translation, which allows the author to look at the ways of translating imagery in descriptions of the actions performed by non-human agents in an area affected by environmental disaster. The paper goes on to analyse translation strategies that may facilitate the greening of language. This discussion becomes a starting point for further considerations whose aim is to include translation studies in the spectrum of the environmental humanities as a consequence of the long-growing interest in ecolinguistics and as yet another manifestation of the cultural turn in translation studies. Based on these findings and on Maria Tymoczko’s (2000) interpretation of the “political engagement” of translation, the paper reflects on the existing terminology of translation studies and suggests that it requires a reformulation to align it with the needs of posthumanities. The intention behind the thus-outlined “critical eco-translation studies” is to facilitate the development of specific translation strategies aimed at deepening the reader’s eco- and biocentric awareness, as well as promoting linguistic diversity and the protection of minority languages.

The article constitutes an attempt to answer the question if humanities can build a widely-understood resilience in times of climate catastrophe, and, if so, which humanities can help people survive despite their experiences of unprecedented environmental threats. Resilience humianities, being conducive to the development of social and ecological skills that support functioning in difficult conditions of the global environmental crisis has been considered as one possible way of accomplishing the very objective. Among the skills mentioned the most important included the ability to build the sense of community of all the creatures living on Earth, or form belonging to a great network of life (intertwining humanities), to shape emotional closeness with the Earth (field humanities), and develop an attitude of readiness for the future creating scenarios for tomorrow (future humanities). Also, an attempt was made to look at the current ecological crisis as an opportunity to work through the concepts of the humanities which are capable of creating reality and the future, and, at the same time, constitute the source of regeneration of our strength.

The Anthropocene poses a challenge not only to the socio-political order, but also to literary studies – it calls for a rethinking of certain dogmas and methods in the study of literature. The starting point of the article is a reflection on the role of the imagination in the Anthropocene. Contrary to the convictions of traditional ecocriticism, the author argues that the reformulation of the individual imagination is not an appropriate response to the Anthropocene, and that literature cannot be reduced to the role of “teacher of the imagination”. Instead, the author proposes an immanentist approach inspired by the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It sees poetry as one of the social machines interacting in the field of immanence, whose role is to channel communal desires and find various outlets for them. The author then presents his proposal for a taxonomy of languages (material-discursive practices) of the Anthropocene in contemporary Polish poetry. He defines his taxonomic tool as an “Anthropocene triangle”. The vertices of the triangle are three competing material-discursive practices – the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene and the Chthulucene – as
the extreme points of the Anthropocene plane. The positioning of individual poetic projects in the field of the triangle depends on how close they are to each vertex.

The subject of the study is the destructive activity of man and natural elements (water, wind or fire) in Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav’s lyrics with national and social themes. The aim is to find out how the author, on the content-motivic and linguistic-stylistic level, artistically treats the problem of the reciprocally destructive relationship between man and nature. In this context, the analysis of Hviezdoslav’s poetry falls within the research field of general linguistics (especially stylistics), but it also draws on the results of cognitive-linguistic or literary studies. The research sample consists of 187 verbal artistic texts covering the entire period of Hviezdoslav’s literary productivity from the 1860s to the early twentieth century. From the databank, a selection of 69 poems has been subsequently made that correspond to the established content criterion
(i.e. the depiction of the destructiveness of nature in relation to man and vice versa). The results of the research are presented along two lines: on the one hand, the functional application of the natural element in the figurative plan of overpersonal poetry; on the other hand, the exposition of harmful human activity. The difference between the depiction of man and nature lies in the fact that the destructive natural power on the plane of poetic imagery completes the idea of an oppressed nation, while man is portrayed as the destroyer of the earth in an untransmitted sense.

This article Nature, empathy and concern. Colin Thiele’s “Storm Boy” refers to the issues of ecological humanities. As shown in the analysis and interpretation of the work, Thiele’s short story, as a text representative of the post-anthropocene era, fits perfectly into discussions on building environmental consciousness in a young audience, organizes the contemporary imagination and stimulates action. The individualization of the feelings of the child hero untainted by civilization, his sincere, naïve and innocent understanding of the world, the aestheticization of descriptions of nature and the fixation of its images present in the narrative paradoxically somewhere “between” the two points of reference: on the borderline of the extraordinary power, horror, dynamism and strength of nature and its delicacy, fragility and subtlety, as well as its “humanization” (the pelican thinks and feels like a human), provokes the reader to a kind of “intervention” in the text and encourages empathetic reading. Thiele’s story, due to the involvement and “causality” of the protagonists (the boy and his father) present in the story, as well as a peculiar intersubjective reality of the polysensory narrative, can build an ecocentric vision of the world, accentuate the formation of values and habits, attitudes of a pro-ecological worldview oriented towards solidarity between different forms of life, and influence the construction of conceptual structures necessary for the realization of an ecocentric future.

The authors of the article follow Jarosław Mikołajewski and Paweł Smoleński who faced the Sicilian challenge in their book Red snow on Etna. They perceive this Italian island as a special part of the world where all social, cultural and political processes take place in a unique and endemic way. The text is divided into three parts. The first, initial one, constitutes an attempt to discover motivation and inspiration of the duo in question. The second, proper, part deals with multilevel considerations regarding a Sicilian sense of freedom. The last, final, one shows the escapist intentions of Mikołajewski and Smoleński to rebuild lost passions and will to live on the sidelines of their creative interests. A separate interpretative thread is reflection on the duality of the act of reading and writing, both in the alternating shuffle of their own fragments by the authors of the book and in the self-referential reflection of the authors of the article.

The aim of the article is to analyze the essays of Ignacy Wieniewski, a translator and historian of literature, one of the representatives of the twentieth-century Polish independence emigration in London. The considerations are woven around three collections of essays Powrót na Via Appia (1951), Antycznym szlakiem (1964) and Kalejdoskop wspomnień (1970). The author focused on the main problems taken up by Wieniewski: the relationship between Polish culture and European culture, the key role of the ancient Greek and Roman tradition in shaping European culture and recalling the ancient sources of culture and the original meaning of key ideas of the Mediterranean world. The article highlights the essential arguments of the essayist, proving the lasting importance of the ancient tradition not only in relation to the achievements of classical philosophy, art and literature, but also the broad foundations of the Latin-Christian culture of the West, formed thanks to such ideas as love of man, attachment to individual, social and national freedom,
equality of all people, humanitarianism, patriotism, the cult of the rule of law as the basis of the state or care for the development of culture. The conducted analysis brings the little-known essay writings of Ignacy Wieniewski closer to a wider audience and indicates his place among the Polish writers of the essay.

The aim of this article is to analyze and interpret Róża Nowotarska’s war memories collected in the volume entitled War Triptych. The considerations were focused on the problems of the construction of the memoir text in the context of facts and fiction and the method of description chosen by Nowotarska. These issues are discussed by taking into account the category of egodocuments. The research carried out show that the path to freedom for Nowotarska was also the path of her entire generation, and the documentary character of the experiences is confirmed by real places and authentic people recalled on the pages of memories. As has been shown, Nowotarska failed to tell the narrative from the perspective of that time because her memories naturally grew with additional tissue from future years. Triggered self-reflection and acts of memory which emphasize the continuity of the reference to the past manifest an individual way of remembering the past, but are also becoming the remembered past of a civilian caught up in the war.

The article concentrates on Delta time – the last of the prose volumes of Florian Śmieja, an emigrant poet who died in Mississauga, Canada, in 2019. Śmieja is above all known for his poetry, translation and literary criticism. Prose is less frequently analysed and interpreted, yet it is as interesting as poetry. Delta time, published by Silesian Library in 2018, is a collection of texts difficult to clearly classify in terms of a genre. Among others, it is a mixture of the form of a diary, document, reportage, essay, column, sketch, review, but also autobiography and lyric poems. An impressive panorama of events (starting from the birth in Kończyce in 1925 until the “last” meetings), places (e.g. Zabrze, London, Toronto, Mexico and Munich) and characters (e.g. Czesław Miłosz, Al Prudy, Anna Janko, Zdzisław Najder, Bogdan Czaykowski) presented in the volume, creates a mosaic of the history of the 20th and 21st centuries told reliably and with respect for objectivity, but also with a big dose of humour, self-irony and subjective judgements.

For a long time, literary reportage has been a popular element of the Polish literary scene, but after 1989 its role and form changed: it turned out to be the voice of those whose voice had been taken away – we can consider this thought to be the thesis of this study. For it to be constituted, readers are obviously needed. For without them,no one will hear the calls of these people. There is an interesting and important method (as well as possible differences between methods) used by the authors of the books which I have indicated. It is worth examining whether, at the level of the texts, in how the text is written, a given reportage is the voice of someone else. I distinguish the following categories of this type of reportage: reportage about victims of the system, reportage devoted to representatives of Poland B, reportage about post-Soviet countries, reportage devoted to minorities. The situations discussed in the text may be considered discriminatory; besides, certain stereotypes are still present in the public consciousness. The aim of the article is to show that contemporary Polish reportage, being the voice of those whose voice has been taken away, can confront discrimination and stereotypes and play an important role in overturning a particular taboo.

Olesya Nakhlik’s article brings an analysis of Ukraine’s identity image and its civilizational choices in accounts,
or reportages, by three Polish reporters, Ryszard Kapuściński, Jacek Hugo-Bader and Katarzyna Kwiatkowska-
-Moskalewicz. These literary reportages show a 30-year perspective of shaping the Ukrainian country and society in the context of its recent history, from revealing the existence of post-Soviet inertia on the remnants
of Soviet self-identification in the new economic and political realities after 1991 in Imperium (The Empire),
through the shaping by Ukrainians of their own eclectic identity in the difficult conditions of ethnic, linguistic
and religious diversity in The White Fever, to reflection on the reasons for the (un)successful attempts at a sharp revision of postcolonial views and landmarks during the Orange Revolution and later the Euromaidan resulting in the dramatic events of the Russian military aggression in 2014 with the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in Zabić smoka. Ukraińskie rewolucje [To Slay the Dragon. Ukrainian Revolutions]. Admittedly, the issues thus raised would merit separate scholarly considerations, because, despite the Ukrainian editions of these collections of reportages, they are now rarely discussed by Ukrainian literary scholars, while Polish scholars, in numerous dissertations, focus primarily on the image of post-Soviet Russia, while typically placing the Ukrainian territories in the broader context of considerations devoted to the contemporary situation of the republics of the former Soviet Union.

The present study is devoted to detecting the characteristics of the “non-fiction” genre in the militia novel popular in People’s Poland in the 1950s–1980s. The article consists of two parts. The first part presents a general definition of non-fiction literature and its presentation in Polish, English and Russian studies. The time of the genre’s origin is specified and it is pointed out that such texts have appeared already before. A key feature distinguishing non-fiction from non-literary descriptions of events has been determined to be the presence of an artistic style of presentation. Attention has been drawn to the possibility of weaving fiction into the fabric of non-fiction works. The second part of the study is an analysis of the Polish police novel made against the background of similar works of Soviet literature. This refers to the main characteristics
of the police novel, namely the linking of the action taking place in it to a specific time and place of events. It is this accurate temporal and spatial representation of reality that allows the police novel to be classified as non-fiction literature, and the presence of fiction justifies the mystification obligatory for detective literature.

Wioletta Hajduk-Gawron’s essay has a functional character, its primary purpose being to demonstrate the non-fictionality and glottodidactic potential of Marta Matyszczak’s crime comedy Murder at the Kattowitz Hotel. In the introductory section, she discusses several publications dealing with the features of the crime novel as a genre that represents popular culture. She also presents the results of a survey confirming the interest in Polish urban crime fiction among people learning Polish as a foreign language. These results have motivated her choice of the crime novel as a didactic material in the teaching of JPJO, or Polish as a foreign language, due to its cognitive and ludic function. In the next section, Hajduk-Gawron indicates aspects of the detective story which justify its use in the teaching of linguaculture. This essay is part of the author’s research on the reception of Polish literature and research in the field of Polish language glottodidactics.

The article analyzes the book by Anna Malinowska entitled The Sun is Shining from Katowice in terms of its use in teaching Polish as a foreign language. The author begins the reportage with a description of the fate of Kazimierz Skiba, the penultimate leader of Katowice village, and follows the trail of his walk, confronting the past and present images of the Silesian city. The study refers to the concept of walking as an act of reading by Franz Hessel, taking into account the geopoetic process of reading as a spatial practice. Modern Katowice is currently one of the most important cities in the Silesian Voivodeship, as well as an academic center to which students come every year from Poland and all over the world. Therefore, the text presents the glottodidactic potential of Malinowska’s reportage: a project of classes with foreigners who chose this city as a place of study is presented. This project consists of two parts, developing selected fragments of the discussed work regarding individual language skills and the practical use of information about the city during field classes. The aim of the article is to present literary reportage as a source of knowledge about the place
of residence for an international student, for whom working with this type of text is an opportunity not only to learn Polish but also to get to know the city in which they live.

The subject of the article is non(violence)in the Polish crime fiction in the context of the form of presenting the main protagonist – a (private) detective, a militiaman or a policeman. Both literary protagonists and TV- movie characters (captain Sowa, Halski) or those connected with a widely-understood pop culture (a comic Żbik) undertook a diachronic-comparative analysis. A connecting brace, as well as a starting point for considerations, is work of Raymond Chandler considered one of the authors of so called black crime. The main question is if the Polish crime fiction has borrowed from American narrative patterns and to what an extent it has taken over the way of staging a detective as absolute and necessary Evil. The examples are detectives from militia detective stories of the People’s Republic of Poland, retro detective stories (Marek Krajewski and Marcin Wroński), and modern ones. The main aim, apart from previously mentioned analysis of the person of a Polish detective against the background of crime literature, is to bridge the gap in developing studies on a Polish-speaking crime story, and show a specific delay as far as responses to narrative trends the genre follows on the international level are concerned. It appears that the Polish crime
fiction has skipped the noir phase, which, in turn, is connected with a different attitude towards the aesthetics of violence.

The Knotted Cord – the first English novel by a Polish émigré writer, Jerzy Pietrkiewicz, was published in 1953
simultaneously in London and New York. The book was published in Poland only 52 years later, under the title Sznur z węzłami (2005). The Knotted Cord was written in accordance with the conventions of a contemporary British novel, which allowed Pietrkiewicz to succeed in the British market. The element of exoticism, which included colorful descriptions of peasant life in Polish villages, appeared to be one of the most attractive elements of the novel, highly appreciated both by the critics and the readers. The cultural and social image of the pre-war Polish countryside presented by the writer is shown with a great deal of realism, although in the world depicted in the novel, reality is mixed with magic, and pagan superstitions with the Catholic religion. The two most important rituals shown in the novel are Midsummer Night and the Empty Night ritual related to the funeral.

Using the methodology from the field of Translator Studies, the article presents the figure of the German translator and prominent populariser of Polish literature in Germany, Albrecht Lempp. The paper presents his linguistic biography (in relation to Polish language) and outlines the image of the translator, indicating the main areas of his activity (Polish prose of the late 20th and early 21st centuries). The article proves that Lempp belongs to a small group of people who, by propagating and translating novels, short stories and essays by contemporary Polish writers, created effective and modern tools for promoting Polish literature in the world. The text touches upon the issues of literary reception, the contexts in which literature functions outside its native cultural system, and at the same time its momentous importance in the European dialogue.