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Number of results: 16
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Abstract

The discovery of some hitherto unknown documents relating to Bolesław Leśmian’s family has made it possible to re-read his autobiographical poems as responses to circumstances and events from the poet’s real life. An analysis of his poems in the light of the information supplied by the newly-discovered source shows that they provide a thoroughly accurate record of events as they happened, especially deaths. Not only do the deaths of his mother, father and his siblings hurt him deeply and foreshadow the end of his own life, but also make him feel guilty for not being able to remember them properly: as his memory fails him, they are condemned to a ‘second death’.

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Dorota Samborska-Kukuć
ORCID: ORCID
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Abstract

Regarded primarily as a scandalist, Bruno Jasieński is also an innovator and ‘theoretician’ of the avant-garde. Then, so the argument, he converted to Communism and put his pen in the service of that ideology. He paid for it with the price of debasing his talent to the level of a socialist realist hack and, eventually, the price of his life when the regime he so avidly supported turned on him in the great purges of 1937–38. This article takes issue with the claim – which is part of the generally accepted narrative – that Jasieński ‘swerved gently to the left’ in 1923–1925. This article analyses the politics of young Bruno Jasieński's verse, i.e. the texts produced before 1921, the year of the publication of the first collection of his poems. In so far as his early poetic work contains nothing but praise of the Russian revolution and its ethos, his ideological evolution in the nineteen twenties should termed radicalization rather than a shift to the left.
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Kasper Pfeifer
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Uniwersytet Śląski
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Abstract

This article considers the role of the sister figure in Bruno Jasieński's early verse. His poems as well as various facts from his biography leave little doubt that this highly significant role was filled by Irena Zysman, his sister. The key to the dialectic of her presence/absence in the poet's life and work is to be found in the concept of melancholy. Although Jasieński would hardly be credited with that kind of sensibility, the relationship with his sister does show that melancholy was part of his psychological makeup. Moreover, by bringing in psychoanalytical analysis, the article shows how his melancholy morphed into mania, a transformation which in a way fuelled his political engagement.
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Authors and Affiliations

Marcin Świątkowski
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Katedra Krytyki Literackiej Wydziału Polonistyki UJ
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Abstract

This article examines two collections of manuscripts (previously unanalyzed) with poems which make up Leopold Staff’s debut volume The Dreams of Power. The poet offered them as a gift to Maryla Wolska who deposited them in the Michał Pawlikowski Archives at Medyka. With access to the fi rst, nearly complete, collection we can get an insight into the process of selecting poems for the version that was to go to print (1899–1901). As most of the poems are dated, we are able to establish their sequence and reconstruct the changing concept of their selection. Of special value are twelve poems which had been dropped in the process, and for most part remained unpublished. Each of them is presented briefl y in the article. Apart from making this discovery, the article demonstrates that Leopold Staff’s debut volume as we know it had an earlier version with a set of poems, different from the one that was earmarked for publication under that title.

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Krystyna Zabawa
ORCID: ORCID
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Abstract

This article argues that the short story ‘Ave Patria, morituri te salutant’, first published in a book of Stanisław Reymont's short stories in 1907, shows an overwhelming influence of the expressionist aesthetic. It is conspicuously present in the story's stripped-down sentences, spiked with highly emotive (animal) imagery, and cast in lines that move inexorably towards the catastrophic end. It manifests itself in the disillusioned, sarcastic tone which the writer uses to take up old certainties like military glory and patriotism. Finally, it brings to the fore the conflict between man and nature, man and the universe, the individual and the crowd. As all of those elements are evidently part of the narrative and dramatic structure of ‘Ave Patria…’, it should be viewed as an exemplification of Reymont's drift from realism to modernism (preexpressionism). That transition is also signalized by the tripartite structure of the story. The divisions are worked out with the precision of a master craftsman assembling ‘an epic clock’ (to borrow a telling phrase from Kazimierz Wyka's analysis of the structure of The Peasants), or a painter designing a triptych. The article pursues the latter analogy further by discussing the impressionist technique of framing and cutting off the dispensable elements of the picture.
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Authors and Affiliations

Aleksandra Liszka
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Instytut Literaturoznawstwa, Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach
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Abstract

This article looks at Brunon Jasieński's revolutionary novel I burn Paris ( Je brûle Paris) in the context of the key ideas of Marxist philosophy and that strand of its contemporary reception which saw in it a blend of agitprop and apocalyptic fiction. A close reading of I burn Paris reveals that its author is anything but an orthodox Marxist and his Marxism is open to all kinds of alterations and ideological variants. The article, inspired by Peter Sloterdijk's discussion of ressentiment, argues that the best way to make sense of those disparities is to treat them not as deviations but as an attempt to converge the ideological vision and the thymos (in the sense given to it by Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man); or, in other words, an attempt at tapping and channeling the accumulated rage of the masses to energize the Communist project.
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Authors and Affiliations

Jerzy Franczak
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Wydział Polonistyki UJ
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Abstract

The article presents a previously unknown poem by Jalu Kurek, found in the Józef Czechowicz Museum of Literature in Lublin. The youthful poem titled Nostalgia shows Kurek’s breaking away from the spell of futurism and edging towards an avant-garde poetics with a great deal of juxtaposition.

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Authors and Affiliations

Aleksander Wójtowicz
ORCID: ORCID
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Abstract

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.

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Authors and Affiliations

Anna Czabanowska-Wróbel
ORCID: ORCID
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Abstract

A volume of poems Życia mego kwiat [ The Flower of My Life] by Maria Czajkowska, née Grabińska, published posthumously in 1921 – alongside her brother's (Stefan Grabiński) horror play Ciemne siły [ Dark Forces] – includes just over twenty poems, mostly sonnets, written in the poetic style characteristic of the Young Poland movement. Most of them seem to have been written between 1917 and 1918, after the death of Maria Czajkowska’s sister Jarosława; yet even those that may predate that tragic event are steeped in a mood of unrelieved melancholy and grief. Together, they can be read as a record of the poet’s spiritual biography, dominated by the trauma of waiting for death and the burden of a miserable and unhappy life. With her allegiance to Young Poland's mannered style, replete with metaphors of illness, demise and destruction, Czajkowska may appear outmoded in the post-war literary scene, and yet her poems cannot be denied an originality and authenticity of their own. Moreover, her dark introvertism is not unlike the Gothic strain of her brother’s popular fiction.
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Bibliography

●Bednarski J., Wspomnienia o Stefanie Grabińskim, opracował i do druku podał Jakub Knap, „Litteraria Copernicana” nr 1 (11) 2013, 292–307.
●Bieńczyk M., O tych, co nigdy nie odnajdą straty, „Świat Książki”, Warszawa 2012.
●Brzozowski Korab S., Nim serce ucichło, Wydawnictwo J. Mortkowicza, Warszawa 1910.
●Cioran E., Na szczytach rozpaczy, przeł. Ireneusz Kania, Oficyna Literacka, Kraków 1992.
●Czajkowska z Grabińskich M., Życia mego kwiat. Poezje, [w:] Grabiński S., Ciemne siły, Wydawnictwo Polskiej Książnicy Naukowej, Przemyśl 1921, s. 103–128.
●Gutowski W., Mit – Eros – Sacrum. Sytuacje młodopolskie, Homini, Bydgoszcz 1999.
●Grabiński S., Maria z Grabińskich Czaykowska, [w:] tenże, Ciemne siły, 1921, s. 99–102.
●Hutnikiewicz A., Twórczość literacka Stefana Grabińskiego (1887–1936), Towarzystwo Naukowe, Toruń 1959.
●Janiuk J., Obraz gruźlicy na przełomie XIX i XX wieku w literaturze pięknej okresu Młodej Polski i dwudziestolecia międzywojennego, Aspra, Warszawa 2010.
●Kępiński A., Melancholia, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2001.
●Kuczyńska A., Piękny stan melancholii. Filozofia niedosytu i sztuka, Wydział Filozofii i Socjologii Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Warszawa 1999.
●Mazur A., Pod znakiem Saturna. Topika melancholii w późnej twórczości Elizy Orzeszkowej, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Opolskiego, Opole 2010.
●Płomieński J., Twórcy bez masek. Wspomnienia literackie, Pax, Warszawa 1956.
●Pollak R., Ze wspomnień o Stefanie Grabińskim, [w:] Księga pamiątkowa ku czci Konrada Górskiego, red. A. Hutnikiewicz, Towarzystwo Naukowe, Toruń 1967, s. 361–363.
●Samborska-Kukuć D., Stefan Grabiński w świetle nowych źródeł, „Pamiętnik Literacki” 2021, z. 1, s. 163–170.
●Sikora I., Przyroda i wyobraźnia. O symbolice roślinnej w poezji Młodej Polski, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, Wrocław 1992.
●Sławek T., Saturniczny pątnik. Robert Burton i jego „Anatomia melancholii”, „Literatura na Świecie” nr 3, 1995, s. 58–73.
●Sontag S., Choroba jako metafora. AIDS i jego metafory, przeł. Jarosław Anders, Wydawnictwo Karakter, Kraków 2016.
●Światy melancholii: w 500-lecie „Melencolii” Albrechta Dürera (1514–2014), red. M. Dybizbański, A. Mazur, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Opolskiego, Opole 2016.
●USC Borszczów (parafia greckokatolicka), [w:] Centralne Archiwum we Lwowie, f. 487, op. 1, t. 18, akt urodzenia z roku 1892, k. 181.
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Authors and Affiliations

Dorota Samborska-Kukuć
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Wydział Filologiczny, Instytut Filologii Polskiej i Logopedii Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, Łódź
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Abstract

This article explores various text coding strategies in the work of Polish Futurists. Drawing on the concept of Jerome J. McGann’s bibliographic code, this analysis of the fonts, layout and typographic devices used in their texts reveals a development culminating in literary breakthrough at the beginning of the interwar period. It shows, moreover, that the Futurist revolutionists depended heavily on the material and manufacturing base which they wanted to overthrow and replace. That dependence manifests itself in the incongruous adoption of various traditional fonts, typographic and graphic designs, which remains the most striking characteristic of a Futuristic text.
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Authors and Affiliations

Aleksander Wójtowicz
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. UMCS
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Abstract

This article looks at Leopold Staff’s translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s volume of poems Fruit-Gathering (1921). A close analysis of the translator’s decisions and miscomprehensions in the Polish text – in confrontation with the French, German and English versions of the original – suggests that he made use of the English translation. The article throws light on the circumstances which led to the introduction of Tagore’s poetry to the Polish audience; reviews the main features of his poetics; and undertakes a comparative reading of the two texts, the original and its Polish rendition. The latter appears to be in many ways beholden to early 20th-century modernist taste, in particular its idealizing aesthetics and a fascination with the exotic Orient.

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Authors and Affiliations

Olga Płaszczewska
ORCID: ORCID
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Abstract

This article deals with Makryna, a forgotten drama in five acts and a prologue pub-lished in 1929 by Antoni Waśkowski. The analysis focuses on the drama’s intertextual dialogue with the history, literature and mythology of Polish Romanticism and the mod-ernist reception of those issues in Stanisław Wyspiański’s Legion (1901). The article takes to task the critical consensus that sees Waśkowski as a second-rank epigone of Romanti-cism and the Young Poland movement. In fact, it argues, Makryna challenges the re-ceived historiosophic vision of Poland’s history embodied in the work of, among others, Stanisław Wyspiański, Waśkowski’s literary master. The author of Makryna is uncom-promising in his denunciation of the 19th-century revolutionary movements and some aspects of the Polish Romantic culture, especially the messianic commitment of ‘national prophets’ like Makryna Mieczysławska, Juliusz Słowacki (the poem Rozmowa z Matką Makryną Mieczysławską [ A Conversation with Mother Makryna Mieczysławska]), Adam Mickiewicz, Andrzej Towiański.
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Authors and Affiliations

Krzysztof Andruczyk
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. dr, absolwent Wydziału Filologicznego Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku
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Abstract

This is an analysis of the strategies used to create a perception of Japan, or the ‘Japan effect’ – a term inspired by Roland Barthes ‘reality effect’ ( effet de reel) – in the fiction of Wacław Sieroszewski and Ferdynand Ossendowski, two Polish writers who were first to introduce Japan to the Polish general public. Both visited Japan, Sieroszewski in 1903 and Ossendowski in 1921; both were authors of popular fiction set in exotic locations. However, each of them chose a different strategy of presenting the Japanese setting of their stories. While Ossendowski's construction of the ‘Japan effect’ can be described as ‘encyclopedic realism’ (his narrative is stitched up with multiple notes and explanations), Sieroszewski takes a more direct, dramatic approach. Sieroszewski prefers to confront the reader with various exotic ‘props’ and to take him on a journey of discovery of the peculiarities of Japanese behavior, aesthetic values and ways of thinking.
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Bibliography

● Alberowa Z., Kossowski Ł., Inspiracje sztuką Japonii w malarstwie i grafice polskich modernistów, Kielce–Kraków 1981.
● Art of Japan, Japanisms and Polish-Japanese art relations, red. A. Kluczewska-Wójcik, J. Malinowski, Toruń 2012.
● Bandrowski J., Przez jasne wrota, Lwów 1920.
● Baroni H.J., The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Zen Buddhism, New York 2002.
● Barthes R., Od dzieła do tekstu, przeł. M.P. Markowski, „Teksty Drugie” 1998, nr 6.
● Barthes R., Efekt rzeczywistości, przeł. M.P. Markowski, „Teksty Drugie” 2012, nr 4.
● Bujnicka M., Egzotyka «ad usum populi», czyli deskrypcja przestrzeni w powieściach Antoniego Marczyńskiego, [w:] Egzotyzm w literaturze, red. E. Kuźma, Szczecin 1990.
● Dalby L., Gejsza, tłum. E. Pałasz-Rutkowska, Warszawa 2001.
● Deja K., Polski japonizm literacki 1900–1939, Kraków 2021.
● Estetyka japońska. Antologia, red. K. Wilkoszewska, Kraków 2008.
● Hearn L., Ko-ko-ro, Kraków 1906.
● Hedin S., Ossendowski a prawda, tłum. A. Polończyk, Olsztyn 2014.
● Henshall K.G., Historia Japonii, przeł. K. Wiśniewska, Warszawa 2011.
● Keene D., Estetyka japońska, [w:] Estetyka japońska. Antologia, red. K. Wilkoszewska, Kraków 2008.
● Kempf Z., Orientalizm Wacława Sieroszewskiego. Wątki japońskie, Warszawa 1982.
● Kijak A., Odkrywca innej Syberii i Dalekiego Wschodu, Kraków 2010.
● Kluczewska-Wójcik A., Japonia w kulturze i sztuce polskiej, Warszawa–Toruń 2016.
● Kossowski Ł., Martini M., Wielka fala. Inspiracje sztuką Japonii w polskim malarstwie i grafice, Warszawa–Toruń 2016.
● Król A., Japonizm polski, Kraków 2011.
● Kubiak Ho-Chi B., Estetyka i sztuka japońska, Kraków 2009.
● Melanowicz M., Formy w literaturze japońskiej, Kraków 2003.
● Melanowicz M., Historia literatury japońskiej, Warszawa 2012.
● Michałowski W., Ossendowski. Podróż przez życie, Poznań 2015.
● Ossendowski A., Cud bogini Kwan-Non, Poznań 1924.
● Ossendowski F., Szkarłatny kwiat kamelii. Opowieści z życia Japonii, Łomianki 2011.
● Pinguet M., Śmierć z wyboru w Japonii, przeł. M. Kubiak Ho-Chi, Kraków 2007.
● Sieroszewski A., Wacława Sieroszewskiego żywot niespokojny, Warszawa 2015.
● Sieroszewski W., Miłość samuraja, Warszawa 1990.
● Sieroszewski W., Wśród kosmatych ludzi, Warszawa 1957.
● Sieroszewski W., Z fali na falę, Kraków 1910.
● Straszne trzęsienie ziemi w Japonii, „Głos Polski” 1923, nr 243, s. 1.
● Trzęsienie ziemi w Japonii, „Słowo Polskie” 1923, nr 241.
● Tubielewicz J., Historia Japonii, Wrocław 1984.
● Tubielewicz J., Mitologia japońska, Warszawa 1977.
● Yokohama w gruzach, „Ilustrowany Kuryer Codzienny” 1923, nr 217.
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Authors and Affiliations

Katarzyna Deja
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Wydział Polonistyki, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków
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Abstract

This article is an attempt to re-read Tadeusz Miciński's poem ‘Blood-red Snow’ (‘Krwawy śnieg’, 1914) in the context of a tragedy that took place in February 1914 at Zakopane, or more precisely, in Kościeliska Valley in the Tatras. It was there that Jadwiga Janczewska, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz's fiancée, took her life by shooting himself in the head. Her suicide prompted Miciński, a close friend of Witkiewicz, to write the ‘Blood-red Snow’, a poetic reportage infused with ambiguity, which presents a highly subjective vision of the tragic event and its circumstances. Read out of context, the poem seems be just another product of the poet's fascination with the philosophy of the occult (Luciferianism). However, when its real-life context is restored, the heady symbolism turns out to be a camouflage of a poème à clef, a genre which ‘Blood-red Snow’ actually exemplifies. The poem is an instant reaction to a dramatic event. To make sense of it one does not need to be familiar with the whole story of the relations between Miciński and Witkiewicz. What is perhaps worth noting is that their relationship soured after Jadwiga Janczewska's suicide, which triggered an unending blame game on all sides. While the public held Witkiewicz responsible for the young woman's death, he himself put the blame on Miciński and, first and foremost, on Karol Szymanowski. These controversies are, however, beyond the scope of the 'Blood-red Snow'.

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Authors and Affiliations

Anna Czabanowska-Wróbel
ORCID: ORCID
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Abstract

This article presents a new reading of the spoof poetic manifesto ‘Chamuły poezji’ [‘The Cads of Poetry’] written by Julian Przyboś in 1926. His use of the apocalyptic tones of early modernist poetry to lampoon a trio of acclaimed poets associated with Young Poland (especially Jan Kasprowicz) suggests a complex nature of Przyboś’s rejection and dependence on that movement. In general, the influence of Young Poland, though quite conspicuous in is juvenilia and early publications, tends to fade away. ‘Chamuły’ is a pejorative nonce word which alludes to the Biblical Ham as well as a Polish word for a cad or ill-bred bumpkin. This article adds to it another layer of meaning, based on Derrida’s interpretation of the Apocalypse, with allusions to sexual and genital imagery. And more generally, it reframes the whole Przyboś’s poetic work (not just his early poems) using Catherine Malabou’s concept of plasticity. Seen in a broader historical perspective, Przyboś’s struggles to break with Young Poland are not unlike the predicament of many eighteenth-century writers caught in the dispute between the Moderns and the Ancients, satirized in Swift’s Battle of the Books. The overall conclusion of this study is that at all times the avant-garde and the arrière-garde remain in a continuous dialogue and the innovators never lose sight of those left behind. Poetry is, after all, metamorphic and cannot be contained within within the bounds of manifestoes and artistic programmes.

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Authors and Affiliations

Iwona Misiak
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Abstract

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’.

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Authors and Affiliations

Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn

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