Andrea F. De Carlo
A city with many faces. The image of Naples in Zygmunt Krasiński’s works.
As many researchers have noted, although Krasiński felt a special affinity for Italy, his relationship to the Italian soil was subjected to emotional variations and changes. The article aims to analyze the complicated and ambiguous relationship between the poet and Naples: a city of many different shades and faces, where Krasiński’s lover Delfina Potocka lived. This ambivalent relationship to Italy is reflected in the poet’s correspondenc and works.
Naples remains an emblematic city for Krasiński, because in his work it appears, on the one hand, as a perfect backdrop for an ideal place where he can set his love, and on the other hand, as unbearable place, where the poet was reluctant to stay. Most likely, this Krasiński’s dualistic picture of Italy was influenced not only by the socio-political problems of the city, but also, above all, by personal feelings, moods and uneasiness for his suffering homeland.
Marzena Woźniak-Łabieniec
“I had the strangest dream…”. Arte e amore in dreamlike notes of Gustaw Herling-Grudziński’s Dziennik 1957–1958.
The purpose of this article is to discuss dreamlike themes of Gustaw Herling‑ Grudziński’s Diary 1957–1958. The dream descriptions reveal the part of the writer’s spiritual biography that comes to the fore from the subconscious. Sleep plays an important role in showing the deepest emotions and mental states of the speaking subject. The dream records reveal more than the author tells about himself directly. They help to interpret the subject’s hidden emotions, his state of mind, reveal repressed psychological contents, a result of painful personal experiences. They relate to the most important topics for the writer, such as artistic creativity (inspiration and the process of creating a work) and love to Krystyna, his first wife.
Mariusz Jochemczyk
“Inglourious Basterds”. Italian reminiscences of Artur Międzyrzecki’s writing.
The article presents the process of individual, personal “memory work”. It concerns the traces of collective and individual military experience (something like post-traumatic stress disorder) in literary notation. It is interesting how the military trauma of the Italian campaign is revealed in the narrative, how it “tells” in the changing phases of the performance. The nature of this process is very difficult to describe (“fix” the experience and “blur” it, “constructing individual fate” and “denying reality”, “mythologizing facts” and “displacing the real”): it varies, opalesces in subsequent creative transformations.
Bogusława Bodzioch-Bryła
Trapped on a journey… Poetic images of contemporary Italy in the works of Adam Zagajewski.
The author distinguishes and analyzes those poems by Adam Zagajewski in which the poet attempted to capture and describe the atmosphere of Italian cities and towns, with their charming landscapes, nostalgic nooks and bustling arteries. His poetic eye and sound-sensitive ear are especially inspired by this kind of non-obvious beauty that is suddenly visible, in a momentary flare, often in a perception tired of wandering, but always focused on what is individual, meaningful and important. Subsequent works, along with analyzes devoted to them, were arranged in correlation with the topographic layout of the map of Italy, in line with the north-south vector (Camogli, Bogliasco, Genoa area, Ravenna, Sansepolcro, Siena, Rome, Sicily). The poet captures and preserves not only what is the most obvious, undoubtedly beautiful (such as Ravenna mosaics or paintings seen in dark museums or side chapels), but also the hustle and bustle of the capital, the stony sadness of a necropolis visited by chance, and finally the lazy peace of Italian November.
Aleksander Nawarecki
“What is poetry?” (Derrida, Uniłowski, Berardi).
The article takes the form of a triptych presenting the views on the poetry of Jacques Derrida, Krzysztof Uniłowski and Franco Berardi. It exposes the differences in the position of a philosopher, literary critic and political scientist, and at the same time the different sensitivity of a French, Pole and Italian. The initial question “What is poetry”, formulated in Italian, has important consequences, because in the opinion of many European nations, Italian sounds at once songful, childish and poetic. The effect of this stereotype is the “Italianization” of poetry associated with fun, pleasure, sensuality, sweetness, etc. Derrida – as the author suggests – dialogues with this myth comparing the poem to the hedgehog from a fairy tale for children. The philosopher from Bologna, on the contrary, rejects “infantile” associations, and attributes to poetry a healing, revolutionary, messianic power. Finally, Uniłowski, who has been reluctant to comment on poems, discovers the originality and topicality of Berardi’s position, which provokes a series of associations concerning both contemporary and ancient humanities.
Krystyna Jaworska
Zofia Kozarynowa: the role of an academic teacher in the development of Polish studies in Italy.
The paper deals with some relevant aspects of the role played by the writer Zofia Kozarynowa in the development of Polish studies at the University of Turin in the interwar period, where she was sent by the Polish Ministry of Education as an exchange language teacher and where she assisted the Turin scholars Maria and Marina Bersano Begey and especially Clotilde and Cristina Garosci in their translation and research work. The contribution of Zofia Kozarynowa, seen as part of the activities of promotion of the knowledge of the Polish culture in Italy supported by the Polish authorities, and for which Roman Pollak was responsible, is reconstructed on the basis of Kozarynowa’s and other authors’ writings, as well as on the basis of unpublished archival sources.
Francesco S. Perillo
Echoes of the battle of Kosovo polje (1389) in Italian historiography and culture.
On June 15, 1389 Serbian troops and their allies were defeated by the Turks on the Kosovo field. Many valiant Christian fighters and the Serbian prince Lazar Hrebljanović, who was sanctified by the Orthodox Church, fell in the battle. The disaster of the Christian army paved the way for the Ottoman invasion of the Balkan Peninsula, but the defeat assumed the value of a myth for the Serbian people, which accompanied their existence over the centuries as a model of sacrifice and love of the country.
Tadeusz Sławek
Rain permeats all. On consolation.
Taking a lead from Jaroslav Seifert’s short poem, we attempt a meditation on sadness and the possibility of consolation. Assuming that sadness is a part of the existential disposition of a human being, we are asking what a sense is. We look for assistance in Seneca and Cicero who formulated their own tactics of consolation. Finally, we offer a reading of Kafka who undertakes a critique of solace possible only within the narrow limits of language and equally narrow practices of social regimes of work and consumption.
Giuseppe Moscati
Relationships in relation: see at “otherness”.
We are beings in relationship and the identity concept itself is unthinkable without the concept of otherness, which moves us, provokes us, even hurts us but, at the same time, transforms us and makes us free. Thus the co-evolutive relationship is a precious critical key which allows us to read what violence is, its first logics, its differentiated praxis. «I am born – as Aldo Capitini said – every time I say “you”». Going back to good human relationships, provided they are loyal and free of empty rhetoric, means to propose a nonviolent strategy to tackle conflict, starting by denouncing the mechanism of reduction of the “other” (reduced to a victim, or an enemy or a mere object) and aiming to the construction of a new community.
Daniel Słapek
The Conjugation Tables of Italian verbs for foreigners: Polish example Analysis.
In this paper, the author intends to examine the conjugation tables of Italian verbs published in Poland with special regard to a) the general textbook structure, b) the simplified grammar presented in the introduction, c) some phonetic/orthographic peculiarities of the Italian conjugation, d) the presentation of the third conjugation verbs in -ire that require the insertion of -isc- before the ending, e) the overabundance in Italian verb inflexion, f) defective verbs, g) verbs with prefixes.
Zuzanna Hanuszewicz
Creation of an androgynous female knight in Tredici canti del Floridoro by Moderata Fonte.
The author of the article analyzes how Moderata Fonte characterised Risamante as an androgynous female knight in Tredici canti del Floridoro. The Italian woman writer, inspired by Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato and Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, decided to write her own chivalric romance, in which she presented a new perspective on literary women warriors: Risamante is a protagonist in which female and male elements coexist harmoniously; that is not stigmatized by society, which allows her to express her androgynous personality.
Magda Morello
The artist, who ‘’has laboured at the difficulties of design with greater study and better grace than any other woman of our time”. Sofonisba Anguissola’s self-portrait.
The article is about the life and artworks of an Italian renaissance female painter, Sofonisba Anguissola. Its objective is to compare her self-portraits in three different layers- the first one concentrates on formal matters such as composition, colours and theme, the second layer steps out from the frame of the painting and delves into cultural aspects of her life and tries to understand her works in that context. And the third, final layer tries to reveal her own motivations and dreams and looks at her, an artist from those times, through the eyes of a modern woman who, even though living almost 500 years later, thanks to impermanence of art can still feel and experience similar emotions. By analysing her self-portraits, it is possible to see different stages of her life: youth, adulthood and elderly years. Each portrait corresponds to a different
Karolina Najgeburska
In the “box of thoughts”. Jarosław Mikołajewski: Syrakuzańskie. Kraków–Budapeszt–Syrakuzy 2019, 68 s.
The article discusses the literary representation of an Italian journey in the essayistic book Syrakuzańskie by Jarosław Mikołajewski – a poet, writer, reporter and translator from Italian. Since every attempt of writing about the journey through Italy must be confronted with the tradition of writing about this country and its culture, the aim of the research is to explore to what extent the book in question falls within this narrative scheme of the „Italian texts” and what kind of problems the writer must face when undertaking this issue. The author analyses the figures of a traveler and a tourist, trying to examine in what manner each of them determinates the way of experiencing the „unknown”. The important context of the analysis is also the refugee crisis which sheds a new light on the image of Syracuse in present times.