This article deals with the first phase of Jerzy Jankowski’s severing ties with the Young Poland movement and his access to the futurist avant-garde. His conversion to the new poetic worldview, which he pioneered in Poland, was reflected in his articles and poems published in Widnokrąg [Horizon], a magazine he founded in 1913 to replace Tydzień [The Week], of which he was the main publisher. The rebranding came on top of disagreements between the magazine’s contributors. The divergent views focused on the assessment of Tadeusz Miciński’s novel Xiądz Faust. In May 1913, in his former magazine, Jankowski heaped praises on it. However, the following year, when it came up for debate in the Widnokrąg between Miciński’s aficionado Zygmunt Kisielewski and the skeptically-minded Leon Choromański, Jankowski sought to distance himself from both the emotionalism and the intellectualism of his colleagues. By that time he was absolutely adamant that the antinomies of Young Poland’s high art were a trap. Now that the worship of art striving for timeless perfection would have to give way to an unpretentious concern for ‘fugitive art’, the time was ripe for working out a new aesthetic, centered on the thrilling ‘beauty of big cities’, cabaret, cinema, and modern machines. Jankowski broke with his erstwhile mentor Ferdynand Ruszczyc and Zenon Przesmycki-Miriam, to follow the incomparably more exciting Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Meanwhile, Choromański made one last attempt to bring the young man back on track by writing an article, in which he argued that Futurism was crude, and shallow, a throwback rather than a modern breakthrough. However, his warnings made no dint in Jankowski’s faith in futurism. For him its triumph was a matter of historical necessity. And, he had already thrown in his lot with the new movement by publishing his first futurist poems, ‘Spłon lotnika’ [‘Pilot in flames’] and ‘Maggi’.

This article deals with the reception of Arthur Rimbaud’s poetry and his biographic legend by the poets of the last decades of 19th and the first decades of the 20th century, though, in fact, its earliest phase belongs to the literary period of pre-Modernist, anti-Romantic reaction (which described itself by the name Positivism, epitomized by the novels of Bolesław Prus). The process of Rimbaud’s reception proceeded in two dimensions, on the intergenerational level and in dialogue between poets and translators. Interestingly, it acted as a veritable catalyst of changes in the poetics of writers across the spectrum, from the old school (Józef Weyssenhof and Eliza Orzeszkowa) to the modernist avant-garde. The influence of Rimbaud was by no means uniform and went beyond the usual names like Zenon Przesmycki (Miriam), Julian Tuwim or Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. This article casts its net widely to include representatives of three generations, among them some of the less acclaimed authors.

This article presents a comparative analysis of two poems, Stéphane Mallarmé’s ‘Soupir’ (1866) and Wacław Rolicz-Lieder’s ‘To My Sister’s Smile’, published in 1891. ‘Soupir’ is one of Mallarmé’s early poems, yet in many respects, as this analysis demonstrates, looks forward to the French poet’s mature phase and foreshadows the poetics of Wacław Rolicz-Lieder. Chief among the similarities are the autothematic focus and the intent to convey feelings of emptiness and longing for an ideal in poems refined to the point of préciosité. However, for all their preoccupation with the craft of poetry, either poet believed that inspiration was absolutely vital for creativity. This article argues that Mallarmé’s poetics, especially his ideas of inspiration and originality, was taken over by Wacław Rolicz-Lieder, who adapted it to suit his own poetic project.

This article examines the relationship of Maryla Wolska with the poets and artists of the Young Poland in Lwów and, more broadly, with the literary community of the early 20th century. She was a leading light of Płanetnicy (The Rainmakers), an informal group of artists who met at her house in Lwów. The role of a friend and mate, someone who was treated equally as a writer, did not sit well, however, with her role as mistress of the house, hostess of a literary salon and representative of a family which occupied a high position in the social hierarchy. To ride on the crest of the wave she strove to combine two strategies, a modern jauntiness and a studious attention to 19th-century proprieties. Although she did well for herself, her success was by no means complete.