In this lecture, Jacques Derrida attempts to deconstruct the social perceptions of the wolf, and of animality more broadly. In reference to La Fontaine’s fable about “the right of the strongest,” the philosopher formulates the following question: what is a reason or what does it mean to be right in a power relation between two beings, or between two countries in the wider perspective of international relations? At the same time, Derrida questions the legitimacy of using anthropo-zoological analogies or comparisons. By placing selected quotations from Plutarch, Michel de Montaigne, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Friedrich Nietzsche in successive contexts, the author proposes a revisionist re-reading of the myths and socio-political philosophies of the West.

The paper refers to the metaphorical meanings that have grown around the motif of the cuckoo in old literature and culture. Fascination with the world of birds has been uninterruptedly observed from the ancient times. Beliefs and knowledge connected with this issue were passed in vivid and often fantastic legends to be later included into bestiaries and encyclopaedias. The symbol of the cuckoo enjoys a long and rich tradition, both in high and folk culture. The appearance of the cuckoo has always foreshadowed a change in weather. The bird was usually equipped with prophetic power, while its characteristic voice heralded good or portended evil situations. The cuckoo’s habit of laying eggs in other bird’s nest earned its meretricious emblem and it unanimously became a symbol of adultery in reference to both females and males. The old-Polish culture also identified the cuckoo with the Slavonic Venus, also referred to as Zyzyla or Dzidziela. Unmistakably, the cuckoo was viewed as a metaphor of lust for life and sexual drive. The cuckoo broke all possible limitations imposed by ethics and customs. The ingenious bird quite was justly regarded as a metaphor of various deceit, trickery and imposture. Worth remembering is the fact that the bestiary plots read through the allegorical prism made up a kind of valuable lesson in morality given to people by Mother Nature.

The paper is devoted to the role of antiquity in Józef Wybicki’s anthropological thought. The pieces Wybicki composed after the fall of Polish Republic attempt to answer the question how to live a decent life in the times of historical uneasiness and discomfort. In such a situation, a shift to antique tradition, which proved its vitality in old-Polish epoch and played an important function in the Enlightenment period of Stanisław August Poniatowski, is of compensatory nature. In the ever-changing world the patterns of behaviour derived from antiquity allow to point at the universal values that a man needs to follow to live happily in spite of adverse circumstances. Auto-creative character of Wybicki’s writing is equally significant: adopting the stances of antique paragons, he himself in some way becomes a worth to follow figure. Predominantly, he pays attention to his own usableness—devoid of possibility to act in the world of politics, he resorts to bringing up children and pedagogical activities.

The paper aims to describe a story about the Polish-Danish wars from the pre-Piast times waged by a legendary ruler Vizimir and transformed in Old-Polish historical treaties as well as in belles lettres (from baroque epic poems to 20th c. historical prose). The subject of attention is the reciprocal thematic relations of those texts coupled with the discrepancies found between them, referring to the exposition of the plot and the ideological meanings attached to them. The vital issue is also the degree to which the story of Vizimir is rooted in the imaginary of vernacular legends and, what follows, with the durability of cultural memory connected with this ruler.

The paper examines the interpretation of the figure of a martyr, that later proved a tricker, Makryna Mieczysławska, made by Jacek Dehnel in his novel “Matka Makryna” (“Mother Makryna,” 2014). The Romantics, especially Zygmunt Krasiński and Juliusz Słowacki, lacked the knowledge of the charismatic prioress being a tricker when composing a suggestive myth of the Uniate martyr for faith persecuted by the czarism. The contemporary writer perversely makes reference to the romantic legend (synthetically recreated in the first part of the article), describing Makryna as an instrumental figure who in the patriarchal system of Polish culture found a possibility to act as a nun who was aware of her mystification and developed her own legend of a religious sufferer. Dehnel offers a feminist revision of the protagonist in that he shows that her identity is based on a play, on relentless constructing and deconstructing her biography, which, in turn, in his novel’s interpretation was brought out and displayed with resort to, inter alia, the tools of feminist criticism and literary theory.

The paper aims to present a discovery that entails settlement of the source of illustration employed by Michał Arct in the first edition of Maria Konopnicka’s “O krasnoludkach i o sierotce Marysi” (“Little Orphan Mary and the Gnomes”) (Warsaw 1896) that was a German periodical for children “Kinder-Gartenlaube.” The researchers found in its 11 issues published between 1887 and 1890 of which every single image was several years later used in the Warsaw edition. A detailed examination of the illustrations and the texts that accompanied them in their original context allow to state that Konopnicka knew both, and due to diversity of ways to refer to them she proved to have been a master interpreter, a translator and an author of poetic ekphrasis for whom the material delivered by the publisher did not become a limitation, but rather a catalyser of imagination.

As its subject, the sketch performs an analysis of Zofia Urbanowska’s positivistic best-seller for children entitled “Gucio zaczarowany” (“Enchanted Gucio”) from the point of view of its readers’ reception as well as the literary and critical one. The novel served as an inspiration for the 19th and 20th century writers, and was many a time edited and paraphrased anew. To accomplish her goal, the author of the paper examines Faustyna Morzycka’s forgotten piece “Sen Józia” (“Little Joseph’s Dream”), a Young Poland adaptation of “Enchanted Gucio,” in reference it its original.

This article aims to recall Zofia Dromlewiczowa, a writer, publicist, screenwriter, and short filmmaker recognized in the interwar period. It particularly focuses on her role as a writer and author of film novels, produced mainly on the basis of existing scripts and directed to younger male and female readers. The paper shows her output as a symptom of modernity and the writer herself is viewed a witness or chronicler of the cultural changes in the early 20th century. In doing so, Weronika Szulik proposes to move beyond the narrow categorisation of this work as secondary or tertiary.

Julian Przyboś never reprinted his poem “Purpurowy Osioł” (“Purple Donkey”) published in “Śruby” (“Screws”). Why? Because as a verbalisation of peasant poetic imagery, principally and in various ways he opposed to creativity of almost entire half-century that follows it—a still adolescent picture of animal revolution included both anti-peasant and anti-socialist significance.

Ziemowit Szczerek’s “Siódemka” (“Seven”), a realisation of a shift to old-Polish culture that has witnessed reflection on the Polish identity from the beginning of the 21st century, is made subject of the article. The concept of Polish identity contained in the novel is original and cognitively productive: long duration of the old-Polish past is not a “ghostlike” permanence of what dwells in cultural memory, but a material persistence of past in the present landscape and the objects that live in it. The objects exist here and now, in the 21st Poland, but not as active “relics,” but rather as working actors. Aspectual analysis of Seven is not the exclusive aim of the paper. In its purpose, it is designed to lead to more general conclusions that may apply to a nonetheless different approach to “long lasting” of noble culture in Poland and to “long lasting” in itself.

The paper aims to present a discovery that entails settlement of the source of illustration employed by Michał Arct in the first edition of Maria Konopnicka’s “O krasnoludkach i o sierotce Marysi” (“Little Orphan Mary and the Gnomes”) (Warsaw 1896) that was a German periodical for children “Kinder-Gartenlaube.” The researchers found in its 11 issues published between 1887 and 1890 of which every single image was several years later used in the Warsaw edition. A detailed examination of the illustrations and the texts that accompanied them in their original context allow to state that Konopnicka knew both, and due to diversity of ways to refer to them she proved to have been a master interpreter, a translator and an author of poetic ekphrasis for whom the material delivered by the publisher did not become a limitation, but rather a catalyser of imagination.

Visitors to the museum in Oblęgorek have for a few last years been showing admiration to “Wenecja” (“Venice”), a painting signed with the name of the famous writer. The painting was purchased from a private collector. The present sketch attempts to point at the factors that question Henryk Sienkiewicz’s authorship. The issue of attribution is not determined here, though in the coda it is hoped that the paper opens an interdisciplinary discussion on the work of art and invites scholars to reach for to this date unexplored biographical sources.

Problems with Władysław Reymont’s biography have its roots in the author’s confabulations and in forming autobiographical apocrypha which he himself fabricated. Due to that it proves difficult to tell facts from fiction. Seven instances of such fantasy creations have been known: co-called Czech 1900 biography, a letter to Antoni Wodziński dated 1903 (most often explored in research), “Wspomnienia z lat dziecięcych” (“Memories from Childhood”) from the year 1911; “Z powodu »Trylogii« (wspomnienie)” (“On Sienkiewicz’s »Trilogy«. A Recollection”) (1917), so-called 1919 American biography, and two 1925 French ones, namely so-called Nicaean and the one sent to Woźnicki. They vary in many aspects: fact-collecting, mode of narration, degree of particularisation.
The biographies and autobiographies collected in this paper are discussed from the point of view of their origin and content, while attempt is made to point at doubtful places when it comes to their credibility. They form the first purpose of the paper. The second is to take advantage of material viewed as an analytical basis of Reymont’s specific exhibits of carefully hidden biographemes (origin, education, theatre, spiritist, and railroad episodes, as well as those pertaining to his creativity).
Conclusions from the analyses portray the writer as an auto-creator for whom his own biography became a subject of numerous fictional narratives with exposition of many phantasms. So-called Nicaean 1925 biography, a peculiar jeremiad, is particularly interesting.

This is a review of the monograph “Literatura autobiograficzna Żydów polskich. Tradycja, nowoczesność, płeć” (“Autobiographical Literature of Polish Jews. Tradition, Modernity, Gende”r) written by three Judaic studies scholars from the University of Wrocław. The book is a result of a project carried out in the years 2018–2024, funded by the National Program for the Development of Humanities, which aimed at creating a canon of Jewish autobiographical literature via translations of selected works into Polish. These works constitute very important and virtually unknown sources for the social and cultural history of Polish lands. The monograph is an excellent guidebook to this rich and insufficiently explored field.

The text is inspired by a collection of Janusz Degler’s treatises “Obecność Witkacego. Szkice i materiały do dziejów recepcji” (“Witkacy’s Presence. Sketches and Materials to the History of Reception”) as well as by the researcher’s entire achievements in Witkacy’s activity. The author suggests to read the book not only as a story about Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and about decades of building his presence in culture, but also from the perspective of Degler’s biography, who devoted his entire adult life to the writer and with deep commitment brought Witkacy back from oblivion. The volume may thus be viewed as a narrative about Witkacy’s presence in Degler’s life history, a record of his experience in discovering the writer, admiration of his work and personality. “Witkacy’s Presence” is in its essence also Degler’s presence.

The monographer focuses our attention on the various forms of expressing the problem of religiousness in Anna Kamieńska’s writing. This exceptionally intimate (private) sphere of her personality is discussed with delicacy and tact as Kamieńska’s uncommon and unimposing experience of Christianity was.