The latest issue of the journal features texts dedicated to a wide range of topics related to Polish non-fiction literature. These contributions stem from the VIII International Conference “Polish Literature in the World: Polish Non-Fiction Literature – Perspectives of the Sender and the Recipient”, organised by the University of Silesia in Katowice. The authors examine genres such as biography, autobiography, reportage, and guidebooks, highlighting their shift towards the literary mainstream due to both reader preferences and literary strategies. The articles in this issue provide scholarly reflections on the presence of Polish non-fiction literature beyond Poland’s borders, thereby expanding the state of research on literary reception mechanisms and translation strategies.

The article presents selected issues related to non-fiction literature in Hungary and the reception of some Polish works. In Hungarian culture, non-fiction literature has not gained its proper position to this day and, in a sense, it is considered a marginal work that does not have a permanent place in the national canon. It is consistently omitted in new historical and literary studies and there is a lack of continuity in the presentation of this achievement. This genre gained some notoriety and popularity in the 1930s thanks to the sociographic trend of the Hungarian prose represented by Gyula Illyés. However, since the second half of the 20th century, for example, the father of a Hungarian reportage, Árpád Pásztor, has belonged to the circle of forgotten writers, although at the beginning of the 20th century, as a correspondent of capital magazines, he sent reports from various countries of the world. Literary scholars have also forgotten about György Moldov, who died in 2022, and was considered the most famous and popular author of non-fiction literature
during the period of real socialism. Many outstanding Polish non-fiction texts, e.g. Ryszard Kapuściński’s, were able to fill a certain gap in the Hungarian culture thanks to Hungarian Polish translators involved in Polish culture. The most interesting non-fiction titles from the point of view of the Hungarian culture recently include books by Andrzej Stasiuk, Ziemowit Szczerek and Krzysztof Varga.

This article focuses on describing the reception of Polish non-fiction in a country which differs from the country of the original not only in terms of the number of readers, but also the market situation. Due to the lack of Macedonian reviews of selected works, the reception of individual works belonging to the genre is presented in a subjective way. In Macedonia, so far, translations of the works of Ryszard Kapuściński, Mariusz Szczygieł, Agata Tuszyńska, Kamil Bałuk and Wojciech Jagielski have been published. It appears that the popularity of a promoted book is influenced by the presence of the writer in the field, as well as good publicity and awards from authors and their translators. It is also the readers’ identification with the content that contributes to sales success. The popularity of a particular work is sometimes linked to current politics, and sometimes it is only after some time that a book starts to be promoted. The reception of Polish non-fiction is framed through the prism of the translator, as well as scholarly readings by Macedonian literary scholars and publishing problems. The aim of the text is to show that a particular work may have a completely different reception abroad than at home, and that this is influenced by many factors unrelated to the quality of the work or the translation.

The main aim of the article is to briefly describe non-fiction literature in Lithuania which is heterogeneous. Popular reading titles are dominated by translations, including a few from Polish. In addition, non-fiction books by Lithuanian authors are published, as well as a small number of works by authors writing in Polish. Each of these phenomena was presented using a descriptive method, with greater attention paid to texts written in Polish. Each of these phenomena was presented using a descriptive method, with greater attention paid to texts written in Polish. Lithuanian non-fiction prose, created in both Lithuanian and Polish, revolves primarily around the theme of loss and transience. It is the result of the authors’ need to preserve on the pages of books the memories of a homeland in danger or lost, family, identity and language. In Polish non-fiction literature, represented mainly by Ryszard Kapuściński, Lithuanian readers are interested in the complex phenomenon of the 20th century – the mechanism of the existence and collapse of totalitarian systems, as well as the related psychological consequences suffered by the collective and individual people, and their transformation in a specific historical social space. Kapuściński’s observations on how history’s cataclysms change the lives of ordinary people and how the boundaries between attackers and victims blur. The small number of non-fiction prose items allows us to conclude that this literary genre is just making its way in Lithuania. However, its popularity among readers gives it a chance for rapid development in the near future.

The main aim of this article is to isolate and describe authorial strategies in Samotnica. Dwa życia Marii Dulębianki by Karolina Dzimira-Zarzycka. The biography of the painter and social activist, which is part of the increasingly clear current of recovering women’s history, is also an interesting example of the formation of an effective authorial strategy. Referring to the theoretical approaches to biography by James L. Clifford, Hermione Lee, Michael Benton, Michalina Krytowska, Lucyna Marzec, as well as to the critical-feminist reflections of Inga Iwasiów, Agnieszka Gajewska and the historiographical remarks of Joan Wallach Scott, the text analyses the ways in which the figure of the biographer manifests itself. The author, skilfully combining information taken from various sources (documents, registers, correspondence, diaries, biographies, critical discussions of Dulębianka’s artistic work and memories of her political activity) and her own findings, not only constructs a convincing story about the life of the selected heroine. In a way, she makes her independent, not describing her, for example, only in the context of her relationship with Maria Konopnicka or as one of the Polish painters in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. It is also important to point out how Dulębianka’s biography becomes a specific intellectual autobiography of Dzimira-Zarzycka, who is not only the narrator but also an equal protagonist of the story she is recreating.

One of the most interesting forms of storytelling about oneself seems to be autobiographies and river-interviews, in which writers try to simultaneously suggest and confuse tropes, entangling themselves in – more or less “supervised” – intimate confessions. An intriguing example of this is Agnieszka Osiecka, who in an autobiographical interview with herself titled Rozmowy w tańcu [Conversations in Dance], attempts to (un)veil her own self and deal with not only the demons of the past, but also her dilemmas, weaknesses, failures and disappointments. Returning to memories of her childhood, her parents, the difficult years of adolescence and no less difficult adulthood, she sketches a portrait of a woman trying to find her own place in a destructive world, looking for love, trying to reconcile her role as a mother and poet. From these stories also emerges a landscape of the harsh reality that surrounded her, and anecdotes about the people who appeared in her life. By talking about others, Osiecka tried to draw attention away from herself. Rozmowy w tańcu shows that it is impossible to create a single, coherent image of the poet, as she took care to be elusive in the narratives and memories of others.

The aim of the article is to present a new perspective on reading autobiographical texts exemplified by Agnieszka Osiecka’s autobiography Rozmowy w tańcu. The study shows that it is extremely important for contemporary literary studies, especially for the study of autobiography, to look at texts through the concept of taboo. The context for the reflection is the author’s “autobiographical interview with herself”. The analysis presented here focuses on the form of dialogue with the poet’s alter ego employed as a strategy for playing with taboos. The narrative strategy chosen by Osiecka allows her to navigate a number of controversial topics and to create the appearance of sincerity and transparency, while maintaining full control over her story. In turn, her skilful handling of both word and form enables her to talk about difficult issues in a way that stays within her own boundaries, while at the same time meeting her readers’ expectations, by taking an interestingly different form that does not set clear genre markers for the writer (and therefore does not generate specific expectations from her readers). Ultimately, the article shows that playing with taboos leads to new narrative strategies that often determine the value of a given autobiographical text. The study falls within the field of literary studies and literary criticism.

The article A story with a seashore. On Bruno Schulz’s pseudobiography in David Grossman’s novel “See Under: Love” is a comparative analysis of an important theme contained in a 1986 novel by Israeli writer David Grossman. In his work, Grossman presents an alternative version of Bruno Schulz’s biography, mixing biographical facts with oneirism. In this work, Bruno escapes from the Drohobych ghetto, goes to Gdańsk and, in the sea, is transformed into a lower form of being: retaining his human identity, he becomes a salmon. In doing so, he fulfils one of the rules of Schulz’s ontology, according to which “the wandering of forms is the essence of life”. The climax of the novel is a dialogue between the protagonist-narrator and the author’s alter ego, Szloma Neumann, and Bruno, who is storing his unknown work titled Messiah in the depths of the sea. Szloma wants to know the meaning of Schulz’s “genial epoch” and the related notion,
cabalistic in spirit, that of a progressive-regressive movement towards the future (the messianic times), identified with a return to the mythical origin and the erasure of human history. The artists’ alliance is thwarted by Szloma, who – burdened by the trauma of the Holocaust – is unable to reject his memory. He does, however, receive a hint from Schulz on how to write a novel about the Holocaust: not death, but love should be its theme. Grossman’s novel, a tribute to the Drohobych artist, is an example of an original reading of his work and, at the same time, a continuation of the motifs and themes that appear in it.

The article is an attempt to answer the question of how contemporary reportage participates in the recent re-evaluation of the perception of disability in the context of Polish social reality. The fragments of autobiographical stories of mothers of children with disabilities collected in Jacek Holub’s book are a starting point for considerations on the challenges of reportage as an “indicative genre” and “confusing”, which becomes an indicator of changes taking place in social awareness, assuming 1) broad, also in terms of emotions, understanding of social facts, 2) treating literariness as a necessary medium for presenting reality, apart from documentarian. The text is an attempt to look at the problems of care for people with profound disabilities indicated in Holub’s reportage from the perspective of culturally critical disability studies, where disability is understood as a “form of difference” that obliges society to introduce appropriate adaptations and pathographies in the recently intensified social reflection on health and disease. Holub’s reportage, against the background of the public debate on disability takes on a deeper meaning – not only does it deal
with mothers of “disabled children”, influencing the collective awareness related to the perception of their rights and role, but also it is itself a voice of activist involvement.

The aim of this article is to characterise the visual turn visible in recent years in Polish reportage literature. The reflection on the problem in question is profiled by two theses. Firstly, there is a growing importance of graphic components which adjoin the documentary text or co-create the material space of books classified as reportage. Secondly, the visual aspects of publications from this genre are increasingly exceeding the narrowly conceived documentarism as a result of the rejection of the rule of semantic transparency. The analysis driven by the distinguished theses and supported by references to the semiotics of the image covers two groups of issues. The first group consists of visual effects resulting from specific editorial procedures, including those resulting from the typographic layout of the text. The second is made up of photographs used in non-fiction books as a sense-making tool. As an exemplification of the processes studied, the author refers to selected publications by Mariusz Szczygieł, Filip Springer, Wojciech Tochman, Jarosław Mikołajewski, and Marcin Kołodziejczyk. The context for the considerations is the crisis of orthodox factography noticeable in the post-modern era, resulting in the liquidation of the notion of fact and the popularisation of quasi-non-fictional forms alternative to reportage.

The paper presents the book by Mirosław Gabryś (born 1973), titled Islandzkie zabawki. Zapiski z wyspy wulkanów [Icelandic toys. Notes from the volcano island] in which the author describes his 5-year-long stay on the island (2005–2010). His report is the first original attempt in the Polish literature to show the strategy
of a Polish migrant – a representative of the largest and youngest national minority in Iceland – to adapt to
the new social and natural environment. It is a subjective, multi-layered and hybrid narrative. For its author,
emigration is an adventure, an important adaptive strategy, especially in the light of an economic crisis of the host country – Iceland, despite the fact that he has never felt at home here and has not stayed for longer. Event though he relatively rarely moves beyond an obvious paradigm of dualistic thinking: an immigrant – a citizen, we – others, connection to the place – non-placement, in the perspective of experiences, individual feelings and meanings he assigns to them, the author of the book is an example of a temporary emigrant who does not always fit the stereotype of a Pole in Iceland and even criticizes his compatriots.

The aim of the article is to signal and analyze a symptomatic phenomenon evident in the Polish publishing market, situated on the border between tourism and literature, and reflecting various connections and mutual inspirations between practical travel literature such as guides and walkers, classified as non-fiction, and fiction. It is devoted to a series of guidebooks to mainly European cities and islands entitled “Podróż Nieoczywista” that has been published since 2019. The guides by three famous writers i.e. Grażyna Plebanek, Manuela Gretkowska and Katarzyna Tubylewicz were subject to a detailed analysis. The study focuses primarily on the coexistence, in their books, of the non-fictional nature of urban topography, autobiographical reminiscences about the places described by the aforementioned writers, and references to the plots of their own, as well as other authors' literary works, whose action takes place in these locations. To carry out the analysis, the terms and concepts taken from geopoetics, urban studies and gender studies
were used. The article is a contribution to the outline of the current image of Polish literature, in which a clear tendency is to shift peripheral genres (a guide) towards the literary center.

Based on Powlekać rosnące. Apokryfy prenatalne [Coating the Growing. Prenatal Apocrypha] (2013) by Joanna Mueller, the most significant essay on motherhood in Polish literature, the author discusses the role that women’s essay writing and its hybrid nature play in the process of self-determination. Moreover, it presents how literary essays – by means of creating a story, a storyline perceived through narrative structures – influence an individual shape of each work and personal creative experience.

This article focuses on the latest Polish prose and discusses the question of whether references in literary texts to Polish realities (references in fiction to people from the world of politics, religion, culture; to spatial or urban concretisations) in the field of widely understood fantasy can be grasped by foreign readers. The author argues that decoding meanings is not only inspiring and linguistically interesting (vocabulary-wise, in developing the competence to create texts-descriptions), but also becomes a contribution to mediation and openness to different forms of delivery and the Other. The study cites excerpts from the works of Ignacy Karpowicz (Niehalo), Marcin Kołodziejczyk (Prymityw) and Zygmunt Miłoszewski (Jakzawsze).

Mountain climbing is considered one of the symptoms of European modernity, allowing one to follow changes in culture and finding reflection in literature. Texts about mountaineering, despite their extraordinary popularity among readers, do not arouse much interest among researchers. Hence, the aim of the article is to fill this research gap. The author analyzes a new tendency that emerged in the Polish mountaineering non-fiction with the publication of Olga Morawska’s book Góry na opak, czyli rozmowy o czekaniu [The upside down mountains or a conversation about waiting] in 2011. In a collection of conversations conducted by the Himalayan’s widow with relatives of Polish climbers (including Wanda Rutkiewicz, Jerzy Kukuczka, Andrzej Zawada), there was a significant reversal of personal and spatial perspectives. High mountain expeditions are discussed by people who have not been there, whereas the highest peaks of the earth are shown from a distance and from a low point of view. This leads to questions about a sender, hero and recipient, as well as goals of not only the above-mentioned book by Morawska, but also many similar publications in the field of mountaineering non-fiction (e.g. by Anna Kamińska, Beata Sabała-Zielińska, Katarzyna Zdanowicz). The issues related to the literary topography of mountains take on a new dimension. Using tools provided by geopoetics, the article formulates the thesis that in these works the mountain space is determined not as much by direct experiences and professional descriptions of climbing as by emotions. In stories about, sensual landscapes are replaced by intimate spaces and emotive topographies. With these shifts, traditionally highly masculinized mountaineering writing has seen a greater emergence of women’s stories and narratives about the trauma of fatal accidents while conquering the
highest peaks.

The article considers the poem by Stefan Jan Ślizien entitled Haracz krwią turecką Turkom wypłacony [Tribute paid with Turkish blood to the Turks] in 1674. The work is barely present in historical-literary reflection. Both the work, which is part of a group of numerous texts praising Jan Sobieski’s victory over the Turks near Chocim, and the author himself as a participant in those events deserve closer attention. The last (of four) parts of the work were subject to a closer examination, constituting the poet-soldier’s account of the disastrous expedition of Polish troops to Moldova at the turn of 1673 and 1674, which closed the campaign against the Ottoman enemy. The focus was on how soldiers perceived the foreign reality surrounding them. The real world during war turned out to be unfriendly and the space difficult to get used to. Therefore, the poetic message was saturated with negative emotions, such as disappointment, uncertainty, and fear. In these parts of the text, the work is set in the context of geopoetics whereas from the genological perspective, it was situated in the convention of the “native heroicum”, in the tradition derived from ancient works – the Lucan epic. Comparing the poem against the background of various varieties of old travel accounts, it was noticed that the poem follows a military variant of the “journey.

In the past five years (2018–2022), six books by Olga Tokarczuk have been translated into Korean: Primeval
and Other Times, Flights, House of Day, House of Night, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Czuły narrator [The Tender Narrator] and Zgubiona dusza [The Lost Soul]. South Korean readers most prefer the novels: Flights, Primeval and Other Times and Zgubiona Dusza [The Lost Soul]. This article deals with the reception of Tokarczuk’s work in South Korea, the reaction of the Korean media after the publication of a particular work, reviews written by literary critics and Korean writers, and the aspect of publishing strategies undertaken by South Korean publishing houses. An important factor in the popularity of Tokarczuk’s works in South Korea is the subject matter, which refers to new and interesting problems for the Korean audience – e.g. the nomadic nature of man, the attempt to take a new look at the world around us, myth as a universal model of human destiny, the blending of realism and fantasy, rational description and magic. All this fills in the blanks in Korean literature and culture. Tokarczuk also encourages the reader to engage in self-reflection, to see the world, to cross boundaries. By emphasising that everything in the world is closely interconnected like a constellation, she reminds us that we are never alone. These elements have an impact on Koreans, who eagerly read Tokarczuk’s books. 

The article stems from the belief in the usefulness of the discourse category used to present the transformations of communication activities in old texts, and the need to supplement linguistic descriptions of the glottodidactic process with a diachronic perspective. The text constitutes a part of the Polish studies on a diachronic discourse, and its aim is to expand the network of concepts used to describe the communication process of individuals in terms of developing competences in a foreign language and the knowledge about this language and its users being transmitted. Proposing a term other than glottodidactic to describe communication practices in the area of teaching/learning foreign languages results from the adopted diachronic perspective. Observation of old texts documenting foreign language education indicates a greater share of informal education at that time as compared to the present. Professionalization and institutionalization, which are key to the glottodidactic discourse, begin to dominate in the 20th century. This makes the term less appropriate in relation to older statements describing the discursive space of foreign language education. The understanding of the expression a glottoeducational discourse is presented against the background of taxonomies of discourse functioning in Polish literature and the conceptual scopes of the terms didactics, glottodidactics and education. This allowed us to establish that a glottoeducational discourse fits into the space of educational discourse and is a term that is broader in scope than a glottodidactic discourse. The definitional considerations are exemplified by the description of non-discursive elements in the texts of the glottoeducational discourse based on the sources illustrating the English-speaking education of Poles. The text sources in question indicate a high absorbency of the glottoeducational discourse – it is formed in close connection with an institutional and a specialist discourse,
and is subject to ideological influences as well as serves identity functions.

Zootheology, as a new research discipline in Poland, deals with the animal issue in relation to religion, its sacred texts, religious practices, and the broadly understood tradition, including Christian hagiographies – which enjoy exceptional esteem among both Eastern and Western believers. The purpose of this article is to analyse and interpret the presentation of non-human beings in Tatiana Goricheva’s essays. This study considers philosophical, theological, as well as hagiographical reflections proposed by the contemporary Orthodox philosopher and theologian. The author of the article answers the following questions: Do animals have the status of independent being in Goricheva’s thinking? Is it possible to speak of the sanctity of non-human beings? Do the descriptions of animal behaviour presented in the hagiographies agree with their behaviour as described by biologists/zoologists/ethologists? The analysis carried out will allow a preliminary resolution of the hypothesis formulated in the title of the article. This research may contribute to furthering this issue in subsequent publications, whether within zootheology, ecocriticism, posthumanism or animal
studies.

This article is a review of the newly published monograph by Julia Elena Goldmann entitled Fan Fiction Genres: Gender, Sexuality, Relationships and Family in the Fandoms “Star Trek” and “Supernatural”. This dissertation seems important for several reasons. It is an interesting contribution to the field of fan studies, which has only recently been developing in Poland; is interdisciplinary in nature; bridges a gap, especially in literary studies of the literary activity of fans; and raises the problem of representing such important social phenomena as gender, sexuality and family in fan works. The review presents subsequent chapters of the publication, focusing primarily on the methodological aspect. Goldmann discusses fan works based on a sample consisting of several most popular fan fictions concerning two selected fandoms, belonging to
specific subgenres within slash – a genre of fan fiction showing the love story of two men. The aim of the analysis of these texts is to identify narrative patterns typical of each of these subgenres, mainly by verifying the presence of motifs observed by scientists who have previously studied slash. In parallel, the author looks at the representation of gender, sexuality, and family in samples of each species. Despite some methodological reservations, the study ends with the conclusion that the very dissertation constitutes a rich and reliable analysis of the phenomena under consideration, which determines its usefulness for all researchers of fandom, especially its amateur literary work.

Certainly Polish cinematographers are the biggest stars among Polish film artists in the world firmament. They were the ones who built the reputation of Polish filmmakers in Hollywood already in the 1960s and paved the way for their younger colleagues. “Some time ago, Jack Nicholson half-jokingly, half-seriously claimed that he could not imagine a well-photographed film without the participation of Poles. The talent, skills and resourcefulness of our cinematographers have earned them the admiration of Hollywood directors and producers and recognition around the world” (Top 10…, 2013). However, relatively few Poles are still aware of the fact that the people in question took part in the production of the world’s greatest hits - films that are loved by audiences around the globe, earn billions of dollars and win prestigious awards at the world’s largest festivals. The author of the article lists the names of those without whom the world cinema would not be the same. The characters of the text are: Dariusz Wolski, Sławomir Idziak, Janusz Kamiński, Andrzej Sekuła and Łukasz Bielan. Such important names as Adam Holender, Łukasz Żal, Alexander Gruszynski and Andrzej Bartkowiak are also mentioned.

This sketch presents the most interesting / most appreciated by reviewers Polish prose and poetry books published in 2023. Its aim is a kind of summary of what happened on the Polish publishing market in the past year. The author attempts to answer questions about how bestseller lists were shaped and whether the sense of threat caused by, for example, the coronavirus pandemic or the war in Ukraine somehow influenced writers and poets by being reflected in their texts. The idea has been to find out what type of fiction was most readily published and which writers and poets enjoyed the greatest interest from reviewers. The brief analysis and interpretation of the ten prose and poetic works presented here also shows what other commentators on contemporary literary life wrote about them. The selection of books has therefore been
based not so much on the author’s subjective feelings, but primarily on their reception. In addition, the aim of the sketch has been to present the publishing diversity and to draw attention to the most popular creative tendencies. Among the authors discussed are Martyna Bunda, Anna Cieplak, Darek Foks, Inga Iwasiów, Marcin Kurek, Bartłomiej Majzel, Zośka Papużanka, Marta Podgórnik, Joanna Roszak and Michał Witkowski – thus, in most cases, authors who are well known to the Polish reading public and who announced their new books in some cases after several years of silence. It is clear from the compilation that the works which were particularly appreciated by (also “professional”) readers were those in which the authors attempted to unite shattered identities, returned to a traumatic past, and tried to put the “here and now” in order. The text falls within the fields of literary studies and literary criticism.