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Thinking in national categories is rooted in man’s and woman’s nature as a „communitarian animal“ who is permanently producing collective community imaginations. It can be found a long time before the French Revolution and acquires astonishing strength in the 15th and 16th Centuries, implying denomination quarrels and linguistic questions (Latin and vernacular). Italian humanist writings challenge colleagues in Germany and Poland to develop their own nation centred programmes of historiography, in which Tacit’s Germania and Miechovita’s Sarmatia constitute analogous points of reference (H.-J. Bömelburg). The evident arbitrariness inherent to some of these nation centred writings reflects the principally imaginary or „intentional“ (Ingarden) character of any communitarian consciousness. This does however not diminish the real historical impact of national consciousness, nor the importance of the cultural and moral universe connected with it – despite the crisis of traditional authorities, hierarchies and values we have to deal with in actual Europe and the world.

Developments that have been observed in the last decades (globalisation, postmodernism, postcolonialism) have influenced changes in European critical discourse and brought cultural phenomena to the fore. One of the consequences of this new postcolonial consciousness is the challenging of the 19^th century concept of Weltliteratur, which is based on Western European tradition.

The author of the article refers to the postcolonial writings of E. Said, G.Ch. Spivak and H.K. Bhabhy as well as the concept of cultural dialogue by H. Gadamer, E. Levinas, P. Ricoeur and regards Polish contemporary literature from the perspective of Western research where the traditional, Platonian model of European culture as being a universal culture, is replaced by a dynamic, intercultural interaction. Confronting “homeliness” with “foreigness” produces less narrow assessments. Hierarchies and conditions disappear here and common cultural experience seems to be most important.

The article is an attempt to examine prose of younger generations after 1989 – in the era of globalization and consumption, on the one hand, and in the period when criterion of “Polishness” ceased to be the main way of self­identification, on the second – in the spatial aspect. The author of the text analyses main psychologically­artistic types of the experience of space as identity factor.

Texts that either come from Poland or are used in thinking about Poland can sometimes be very useful in research and discussions that go far beyond the traditional formula of Polish Studies. The author of this article suggests four disciplines for research: the concept of history, Europe, nation and Judaica. Polish texts are needed in these fields and reading them is often essential. Polonists are generally not fully aware of the importance of Polish texts in such contexts and the number of translations of many important Polish texts is still insignificant. The author of the article postulates a change in Polonists’ perspectives.

K. Balmont the representative of Russian symbolism had closer and deeper ties with the literature and culture of Poland, than other poets of the Russian “Silver age”. He was filled with Polishness. He had the talent to change himself completely, he could feel spiritual kinship with Polish people. He did much to create an attractive image of it in the eyes of Russian readers. Balmont translated his contemporaries – J. Kasprowicz, B. Leśmian, M. Jastrun, S. Wyspiański. He had always admired Polish romantics. He included fragment of their works into his essays with his own comments. It became a great event, when a collection of three dramatic plays by J. J. Słowacki “Balladyna”, “Lilla Veneda”, “Helion­Eolion” (a fragment from “Samuel Zborowski”) came out in the poetic translation of Balmont. The Russian poet had often glorified in his verse and lyrical prose the Polish speech, the Polish heart, the musical genius of Chopin, the great and heroic poetry of Polish exiles that revealed the tragic fate of the enslaved Poland. Balmont’s enthusiasm about Polish culture easily infected other Russian poets – A. Bely, A. Blok.

From childhood Balmont saw in his family “respect for Poland and its language”. His autobiographical novel “Under the New Moon” (1923) in many ways makes it clear how the poet got inspired with love for Poland, began to feel great sympathy for it’s people. Balmont’s mother roused his interest to poetry and music. She was an outstanding personality, wilful, artistically talented. She often played Chopin and knew Polish very well. Her character is depicted with great psychological insight.

With great delicacy Balmont reveals the family secret – the story of his mother’s passionate love for a Pole – an engineer who often visited them and was friends with his mother and father. The Pole was handsome, charming, witty and talkative. His father had to tolerate the rivalry for many years. Frequent talks of Balmont – an adolescent and then a young man – with the Pole about the most urgent topical problems had a profound influence upon the views and inclinations of the future poet.

The novel about a very special family atmosphere and the poet’s growing creative maturity shows in a most poetical manner the way the talented poet, translator and critic first acquired his interest for Polish culture, music, “captivating Polish speech”.

The article discusses Polish borderlands as a creative phenomenon. It considers their cultural and historical importance and the research that has been conducted from 1940 till today. The author uses the term „borderland“ (pogranicze) as defined by T. Bujnicki (Mechanizmy funkcjowania pogranicza kulturowego, 2006). The author explains how borderlands create important cultural situations, significant phenomena and she also proves the borderland character of Polish culture (C. Miłosz, Polskie kontrasty, 1995; Rodzinna Europa,2001; S. Bereś, Historia literatury polskiej w rozmowach, 2002).

The effects of such creativity can be observed in the history and the geography of literature as well as in the biographies of artists and the problem of their identity. These effects are found in the following issues: the role of borderland as a concept in the history of literature (regarding borderland as a „centre” in the period of Romanticism, „borderland” trend in literature); process of crossing the borders and conquering the world (exemplary biographies of the artists who come from the borderland areas); the effect of „repeated biography” Miłosz­Mickiewicz; the effects of literary self­creation.

The main hypothesis presented in this article is the very existence of the discourse of privacy that is rooted in culture. This research covers the area of Polish contemporary discourse. The author claims that certain parts of the world of discourse consist of specific genres of speech and cultural scripts that determine the subsequent language choices of those who communicate. The author also implies that privacy as a psycho­social feature is relative and it is revealed in a bipolar (PRIVATE – PUBLIC) structure. She implies that there is the migration of the discourse of privacy manifestations from their natural context („internal world“ of an individual, home, family, friends) to the public discourse. Such transgressive behaviour of participants of the „worlds of texts“ is one of the most important features of postmodern contemporaneity.

The article considers the motif of rape – one of the most important in Włodzimierz Odojewski’s prose. The author is interested in different examples of sexual violence against women: from patriarchal violation to war rape. In each case both the woman’s body and psyche (stigmatized with indelible trauma) are being analysed as well as the heroines‘ life after the rape. The author of the article also confronts these extreme experiences of women from a man’s point of view (that of the narrator and male characters), trying to answer the question, can rape be narrated and intimacy recovered after such traumatic experiences?

The aim of the article is to interpret Ignacy Karpowicz’s novel Balladyny i romanse in the context of romantic literature. The concept of romantic irony becomes the main theme and here in this article it distinguishes, in Karpowicz’s work, the aesthetic features that are characteristic of such romantic texts as Balladyna or Beniowski by Juliusz Słowacki. The contradictions that are characteristic of romantic irony in Karpowicz’s novel exist as a process of creating and destroying, where interweaving and complicating cultures and orders result in creating a chaotic but deliberate reality. The digressive character of the novel, metaliterary reflections and self­reference, reveal the author’s attitude to the creative process as an intellectual, romantic and ironic game.

The main theme of Bernacki's article is a reflection over genologic dimension of texts included in Gottland (2006) by a well­known Polish reporter and publicist, Mariusz Szczygieł. Bernacki, discussing one of the chapters of the book entitled The proof of love, which tells the story of the biggest in the world Stalin's monument in Prague (1955–1962), defines its form as "reportage story". This kind of "more capacious form", derived from feature documentary whose master was Melchior Wańkowicz, combines, according to Bernacki, elements of journalism and literature. Therefore it becomes a part of a project of a new syncretistic multimedia genology, proposed by Edward Balcerzan.

The purpose of this article is to redefine the category of “contamination”, entrenched in the tradition of literary reportage. Due to the process of genre blurring, the original meaning of the term (the one connected with the presence of creational elements in the reporter’s writings) has now been replaced by a more complex definition. The author creates the hypothesis that the “contamination” of contemporary reportage is caused also by the increase of subjective and emotional factors in journalistic narration. To illustrate this assumption, the article provides an analysis of the book Zapiski na biletach. Written by the Polish reporter Michał Olszewski the book serves as an example of genetic changes of the reportage convention.

Z dr Wierą Meniok, kierownik Polonistycznego Centrum Naukowo-Informacyjnego
im. Igora Menioka oraz dyrektorką Festiwalu Brunona Schulza rozmawia Zoriana Buń

The article presents the most important and the most interesting prose and poetry publications that appeared in 2012. Last year was marked by a dominance of well known authors (such as Joanna Bator, Tomasz Łubieński, Dorota Masłowska, Tomasz Piątek, Tomasz Różycki, Mariusz Sieniewicz, Andrzej Stasiuk, Szczepan Twardoch, Krzysztof Varga, Krzysztof Siwczyk, Justyna Bargielska, Andrzej Sosnowski, Dariusz Suska or Bohdan Zadura) and proved that books that consider identity problems and facing the demons of the past can gain positive readers‘ response.

This article presents the second part of the summary of the season 2011/2012 of Polish film­making. The following films are decribed here: 80 milionów dir. Waldemar Krzystek; Big Love dir. Barbara Białowąs; Hans Kloss. Stawka większa niż śmierć dir. Patryk Vega; Imagine dir. Andrzej Jakimowski; Jesteś Bogiem dir. Leszek Dawid; Lęk wysokości dir. Bartosz Konopka; Mój rower dir. Piotr Trzaskalski; Nad życie dir. Anna Plutecka­Mesjasz; Obława dir. Marcin Kryształowicz; Paths of Hate dir. Damian Nenow; Pokłosie dir. Władysław Pasikowski; Róża dir. Wojciech Smarzowski; Rzeź dir. Roman Polański; Supermarket dir. Maciej Żak. The author concentrates mainly on the premieres for the second half of the year 2012. All the movies that are described in the article are presented from the perspective of how interesting they would be to a foreigner or a person who studies Polish as a foreign language.

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