Tadeusz Miciński i ludzie epoki. Studia

Abstract

The volume of critical articles dedicated to Tadeusz Miciński (1873–1918) is the fifth one (following, for example, The Irony of Modernists. Studies, Białystok 2018) from the cycle “The Young Poland Studies”, edited by Marcin Bajko and Jarosław Ławski. It comprises papers delivered during the conference session “Tadeusz Miciński and the People of the Epoch. Different Perspectives on the Writer and His Inheritance. Commemorating the Centenary of His Death 1918–2018” (Białystok, 11–12 October, 2018), which gathered scholars from twelve academic institutions. The volume is also a complement to the publication dedicated to Miciński’s prose, published in 2017 in Białystok (Tadeusz Miciński’s Prose. Studies, introduction by J. Ławski, edited by M. Bajko, W. Gutowski, and J. Ławski). The volumes about Miciński and modernist irony were part of the project “The Young Poland: Revisions and Reinterpretations”, carried out by Chair in Philological Studies “East-West”, Faculty of Philology, the University of Białystok; Chair in History of Literature of Positivism and The Young Poland, Faculty of Polish Studies, The Jagiellonian University in Cracow; and the Scholarly Unit in the Łukasz Górnicki Library in Białystok. The conference sessions on Miciński covered the following fields: Miciński’s personality as seen his contemporaries and today; A “controversial” Miciński; Miciński as a “prophet”; Polemics with Miciński; Miciński as a polemicist; Relations of the writer with his contemporaries in sociological and psychological perspectives; Metamorphoses of the man and the artist: his youth, his adulthood, and the Russian period; Miciński in the foreign eyes; foreigners in the eyes of Miciński; Literary representations of the writer; literary pictures of his contemporaries; Miciński as a personality in the literature of the 20th and 21st century; Miciński’s works: main lines of reception; Miciński’s works as inspiration for music, visual arts, theatre, and mass media; Miciński and politicians; politicians on Miciński; Miciński in European cultures. The volume is divided into three parts. The first one focuses on Miciński’s life and works, particularly on his late writings and the Russian period of his biography (1915–1918). It opens with an important text that clarifies so far unknown or misinterpreted facts from the last months of his life. In “How Did Tadeusz Miciński Die? On Different Circumstances and Versions of the Poet’s Death” Anna Wydrycka copes with the question that in all probability is impossible to be answered because in the case of the poet’s death the testimonies of eyewitnesses are inconsistent. Urszula M. Pilch examines the identity of “I” in the lyric poetry and prose of the writer. Hanna Ratuszna analyses Miciński’s fascination with Japan: his perception of this country and its culture. Anna Janicka interprets an unknown, newly discovered poem of Miciński. Jarosław Ławski looks into the writer’s article “Verhaeren’s Fate” (about the Belgian poet Emil Verhaeren and the Russian critic Maximilian Voloshin) and presents the Polish modernist as a man of action, glorifying the just war that is raged in defense of culture, in defense of nations and their rights to self-determination, and against the Prussian civilization that – as Miciński thought – had destructive aspirations. The second part, titled “Literary Dialogues and Polyphonies”, shows Miciński and his works in the contexts of other artists: Karol Szymanowski and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (Anna Czabanowska-Wróbel’s article), Artur Górski (Anna Kieżuń’s article), Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Fryderyk Nguyen’s article), Zdzisław Klemens Dębicki, Jan Pietrzycki and Anatol Stern (Grzegorz Igliński’s article), Stanisław Przybyszewski and Gustaf af Geijerstam (Paweł Wojciechowski’s article), and Janka Kupała (Helena Nielepko’s article). In the penultimate text in this part of the book, Irena Szewczenko examines the presence of Miciński in the cultures of Cyrillic script. Her most important contexts are Russia and Ukraine, and she takes into consideration such diverse sources as memories of Miciński’s contemporaries living in Moscow during WWI, or the internet. The third part (“Restless Paths: Reception”) concentrates on the reception of Miciński’s works in contemporary culture: in music and the internet. Marcin Bajko shows how they are used in the subculture of heavy metal music. Similarly, Mateusz Żyła looks into the relations between a “literary field” and a “music field” in Polish heavy metal music. Andrzej Borkowski writes About Contemporary Performances of Tadeusz Miciński’s Poetry in Musical Theatre. Mariusz Doering presents Miciński as a “worshipper of secrets”, who affiliated himself with theosophical thinking. Marek Kurkiewicz critically considers popular representations of the poet on various websites. This part of the volume is ended with Katarzyna Klewinowska’s Literary Epitaphs Dedicated to Tadeusz Miciński on the Tenth and Twentieth Anniversary of His Death, which thematically corresponds to the text opening the volume (on circumstances of Miciński’s death). The whole volume is concluded with the proceedings of a panel discussion during the conference in Białystok (“Miciński – Horizons of Research, Editorial Necessities, Questions”) Białystok, 12 October, 2018, The Łukasz Górnicki Library). The next volume of “The Young Poland” cycle, gathering the papers from the conference “The Young Poland: Revisions and Reinterpretations” under the tile “Wincenty Lutosławski and Literature. Aesthetic Connections – Philosophy – Reception” (Białystok–Drozdowo, 11-12 October 2020), will be published in 2020.