The present article is to recall the general principles of J. M. Rymkiewicz’s classicism and to stress those of his theses that roused a lot of controversies among critics (diagnosis of the culture crisis, time conception, theory of archetypes). Also it is essential to examine the poet’s way to express these theories in his poetry. The investigation helps us to find a contemporary poet interested in metaphysics. In his early poems he expressed various meanings of that branch of philosophy. The (...) first expression is his theory of archetypes. By this he intends to touch the sphere of collective subconsciousness in order to evoke the forgotten archetypal models and to bring them back to life by means of symobls of the time being. His second theory can be described as “awakening the dead”. By poetry (arts) the present generation should get in touch with its ancestors to “wake them up” and thus to cause them to return to us. His third theory has been a continuation of baroque metaphysical poets’ expression. Their influence can be seen in his poems that remind us of Naborowski’s and the Morsztyns’ vocabulary and way of describing images. There are questions asked to the God about the sense of this life and eternity. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to present the senses ant contexts in which the concept of nothingness (and also "non-existence", "emptiness", a "vacuum” and "timelessness") appears in the world presented in Bolesław Leśmian’s poems. The above-mentioned terms are the constructive elements of his poetic reality. The lyric "I" of Leśmian’s numerous poems is the poet, placing the world of his poetry on the borderland between existence and non-existence. Paradoxically, one might say that the poet has created a world which (...) does not exist, though it is characterized by some specific qualities. Thus, there is no clear borderline between existence and nothingness. In the world presented by Bolesław Leśmian, absolute nothingness appears to be impossible. One can, however, identify a kind of transcendental nothingness, which is not the complete annihilation of everything, but only, as the poet put it, "a state of consciousness different from the consciousnes of existence". There is also a category of immanent nothingness, which can be perceived either as a lack in existence (this sort of nothingness is typical of the protagonist from Pieśni kalekujące [The Crippling Songs] or as the annihilation of individual existence. The second type of nothingness is frequently identified with non-existence. The concepts discussed here have been reified and materialized by the poet. They have become the agent or subject of action. Sometimes they are presented as the categories of space. Then their synonyms are "emptiness", a "vacuum" and a "chasm" existing in timelessness. Nothingness is a category which, in the poems by Leśmian, defines not only the ontological status of all kinds of existence but also the drama of the existential situation of characters living in the poetic world presented in the poems. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present the 1951 dicussion on Czesław Miłosz’s escape from Poland. Wirpsza’s poem, published in January 1951, was dedicated to Czesław Miłosz. It was was commented on in a literary cultural newspaper over the next few months. Miłosz is shown as a deserter and a traitor, who has lost his poetic talent. The analysis of censorship documents shows that instructions for Miłosz’s texts and texts about him must have been issued in May 1951.

The aim of this article is to show the influence of Jacques Maritain’s philosophical work Art et scolastique on the young Czesław Miłosz and his work, and how it shaped the poet’s views on art in subsequent years. The author analyzes Maritain’s work on art in the context of theology and Miłosz’s articles published between the two world wars. In terms of methodology, the article draws on the concept of intertextuality, pointing to the dependence of the poet’s thinking during this (...) period on that of the French philosopher. Maritain’s aesthetic creationism was seen by some inter-war literary critics, including Miłosz himself, as a third way between the mimetic aesthetics or art in the service of ideas and the “angelism” of symbolic art and art for art’s sake. In Maritain’s aesthetics, the writer found a system of concepts through which he opened himself up to issues related to human spirituality, ontology and religion. Maritain’s distinction between the purpose of the work and the purpose of the maker directed Miłosz’s attention to the author, as one that has been singled out as bound to strive for self-improvement and self-development. To a much lesser extent, this concept influenced his poetics. His works written in the twenty-year interwar period are saturated with dark symbolism and modernistic mannerisms. (shrink)