[PDF Download] Dante and polish writers : from romanticism to the present 1st edition andrea ceccher
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://textbookfull.com/product/dante-and-polish-writers-from-romanticism-to-the-pre sent-1st-edition-andrea-ceccherelli/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic Images of Hostility from Dante to Tasso First Edition Andrea Moudarres
Dante and Polish Writers: From Romanticism to the Present explores the phenomenon of Polish Danteism from a hermeneutic perspective. The chapters shed light on a series of “encounters” of eminent Polish writers with Dante and the Divine Comedy, resulting in original interpretations, creative reworkings, and a wealth of intertextual references testifying to a dialogue that has always been – and still is – alive, not excluding antagonism and bitter controversy. The contributors are all scholars of Polish literature with comparative expertise, teaching in Italian and Polish universities, which ensures a consistently focused point of view on the receptive context and the ways in which it is affected by the confrontation with Dante. The hermeneutic horizon ranges from the Inferno-like reading of the inhuman lands with which history abounds, to the metaphysical yearning underlying Dante’s “poetics of transhumanizing,” to recent perspectives related to the posthuman and storytelling.
Andrea Ceccherelli is Full Professor of Slavistics – Polish Language and Literature at the University of Bologna and Chair of the Center for Contemporary Poetry at the same university. His main fields of research are Polish literature of the sixteenth–seventeenth and twentieth centuries, Polish-Italian comparative studies (e.g. the presence of Dante in Miłosz’s works), translation and self-translation (e.g. Gombrowicz). He has authored a monograph on Piotr Skarga’s collection of the lives of Saints (2003) and contributed chapters on Renaissance and Modernism to the Einaudi History of Polish Literature (2004, translated into Polish in 2009), and co-authored a book on Wisława Szymborska, Szymborska. Un alfabeto del mondo (An Alphabet of the World) (2016). He is also a translator of Polish contemporary literature into Italian (Czesław Miłosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Józef Czapski, Anna Świrszczyńska, Kornel Filipowicz, Jan Twardowski, Wisława Szymborska, and Adam Zagajewski). In addition, he has translated Szymborska’s biography by Anna Bikont and Joanna Szczęsna (2015), as well as the memories of Szymborska’s secretary Michał Rusinek (2019).
Routledge Studies in Romanticism
The Presence of God in the Works of William Wordsworth
Eliza Borkowska
The Absent God in the Works of William Wordsworth
Eliza Borkowska
The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary
Kristin Flieger Samuelian
George Eliot’s ‘The Lifted Veil’ A Sequential and Contextual Reading
Franco Marucci
Robert Pollok’s The Course of Time and Literary Theodicy in the Romantic Age
The Rise and Fall of a Christian Epic
Deryl Davis
Romantic Futures Legacy, Prophecy, Temporality
Edited by Evy Varsamopoulou
Dante and Polish Writers
From Romanticism to the Present
Edited by Andrea Ceccherelli
For more information on this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-inRomanticism/book-series/SE0699
Dante and Polish Writers
From Romanticism to the Present
Edited by Andrea Ceccherelli
First published 2024 by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
The right of Andrea Ceccherelli to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the contributors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ceccherelli, Andrea, editor.
Title: Dante and Polish writers : from Romanticism to the present / Andrea Ceccherelli.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. |
Series: Routledge studies in Romanticism | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2023041501 (print) | LCCN 2023041502 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032365626 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032367262 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003333524 (ebook)
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023041501
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023041502
ISBN: 9781032365626 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032367262 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003333524 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003333524
Typeset in Sabon by Newgen Publishing UK
Notes on Contributors vii Acknowledgments xii
Inhuman, transhuman, posthuman: An introduction to Polish Danteism over the centuries 1
ANDREA CECCHERELLI
1 Dante and Mickiewicz: The story of a common journey 8
TOMASZ JĘDRZEJEWSKI
2 Słowacki’s Poem of Piast Dantyszek, or the macabre despair of a father-land 25
KRYSTYNA JAWORSKA
3 Reason and will: Dante and Krasiński, a comparison 39
MARINA CICCARINI
4 Dante in Norwid’s Prayer Book 51
FRANCESCO CABRAS
5 Echoes of Inferno V in Kraszewski’s narrative and lyrical work 64
ANDREA F. DE CARLO
6 “Better to fall with Alighieri than to triumph with Nogaret”: Klaczko’s Dante 80
LUCA BERNARDINI
7 The Dante of Stanisław Vincenz
LORENZO COSTANTINO
8 Teodor Parnicki encounters Dante: Only Beatrice and not only 111
MARCIN WYREMBELSKI
9 From parody to polemical pamphlet: Gombrowiczian deformations of Dante 125
ANDREA CECCHERELLI
10 On Czesław Miłosz’s debt to Dante 138
LUIGI MARINELLI
11 What Dante owes to Stanisław Barańczak 148
MARCELLO PIACENTINI
12 Dante in twenty-first-century Poland: The case of Jarosław Mikołajewski 159
LEONARDO MASI
Index by Nadzieja Bąkowska
Notes on Contributors
Luca Bernardini, a Slavist, is Associate Professor of Polish Literature at the University of Milan. He participated in the writing of the Einaudi History of Polish Literature (2004, translated into Polish in 2009), has written a monograph on Polish travelers in Florence (Poles in Florence, 2005), and edited the Italian versions of Wisława Szymborska’s Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces (2006) and How to Live More Comfortably (2016), as well as Adam Zagajewski’s essays Two Cities (2007). He has also translated into Italian and edited Story of a Secret State. My report to the World by Jan Karski (2013), the writer who first revealed to the Western world the extermination of the Jews of Eastern Europe, and Miron Białoszewski’s Memoirs of the Warsaw Uprising (2021). In the field of Dante, he has recently published in Italian a text entitled “Alla ricerca del sasso di Dante: la Firenze dantesca nelle memorie dei viaggiatori polacchi dell’Ottocento” (In search of “Dante’s Stone:” Dante’s Florence in the memoirs of nineteenth-century Polish travelers, 2021).
Francesco Cabras is currently Adjunct Professor of Italianistics at the Pedagogical University in Cracow. He graduated in Italianistics from the University of Padua with a dissertation on Jan Kochanowski’s Foricoenia and received his PhD in Polonistics from the University of Milan. His research focuses particularly on Polish Renaissance literature, as well as on Neo-Latin literature in Poland and its connections with European NeoLatin literature. He is the author of an annotated edition of Kochanowski’s Latin elegies (2019) and several articles on the Czarnolas poet. He also cultivates Polish-Italian comparative studies: as such he has investigated the phenomenon of Petrarchism in sixteenth-century Poland and devoted an article to the knowledge of Dante in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Poland (2022).
Andrea Ceccherelli is Full Professor of Slavistics – Polish Language and Literature at the University of Bologna and Chair of the Center for Contemporary Poetry at the same university. His main fields of research are Polish literature of the sixteenth–seventeenth and twentieth centuries, Polish-Italian comparative studies (e.g. the presence of Dante in Miłosz’s works), translation and self-translation (e.g. Gombrowicz). He has authored a monograph on Piotr Skarga’s collection of the lives of Saints (2003) and contributed chapters on Renaissance and Modernism to the Einaudi History of Polish Literature (2004, translated into Polish in 2009), and co-authored a book on Wisława Szymborska, Szymborska. Un alfabeto del mondo (An Alphabet of the World) (2016). He is also a translator of Polish contemporary literature into Italian (Czesław Miłosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Józef Czapski, Anna Świrszczyńska, Kornel Filipowicz, Jan Twardowski, Wisława Szymborska, and Adam Zagajewski). In addition, he has translated Szymborska’s biography by Anna Bikont and Joanna Szczęsna (2015), as well as the memories of Szymborska’s secretary Michał Rusinek 2019).
Marina Ciccarini is Full Professor of Polish Language and Literature at Tor Vergata University of Rome. Her fields of research include text criticism and Polish sixteenth-century memoirs, seventeenth-century Russian-Polish comparative studies, the Polish literary canon and literature in late Baroque and Enlightenment Era, Polish Romanticism, and twentieth-century theater and poetry. Her publications include the monographs: Ultimi roghi. Fede e tolleranza alla fine del Seicento: il caso di A.Ch. Belobockij (Last Burnings. Faith and Tolerance in the Late Seventeenth Century: the Case of A.Ch. Belobockij, 2008) and Żart, inność, zbawienie. Studia z kultury i literatury polskiej (Joke, Otherness, Salvation. Studies in Polish Culture and Literature, 2008). She has also translated and edited the following poetry collections: Ewa Lipska, L’occhio incrinato del tempo (The Cracked Eye of Time, 2013); E. Lipska, Il lettore di impronte digitali e altre poesie (The Fingerprint Reader and Other Poems, 2017); Małgorzata Lebda, La cella reale (The Royal Cell, 2018), E. Lipska, Memoria operativa – L’amore in procedura di emergenza (Operational Memory – Love in Emergency Procedure, 2022).
Lorenzo Costantino, PhD in Slavistics, currently teaches Slavic Philology at the eCampus telematic University and is also head of the film department at the Polish Institute in Rome, the cultural office of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Italy. His main areas of research focus on Polish literature, both ancient and contemporary, and Translation Studies. His publications include the anthology Teorie della traduzione in Polonia (Theories of Translation in Poland, 2009) and the monograph Necessità e poetica. Profilo della traduttologia polacca contemporanea (Necessity and
Poetry. A Profile of Contemporary Translation Studies in Poland, 2012). He is also a translator from Polish.
Andrea F. De Carlo teaches Polish Language and Literature at “L’Orientale” University of Naples. In the academic years 2006–2010 he taught Polish language and literature at University of Salento in Lecce, and in 2020–2021 at Aldo Moro University of Bari. He has been a visiting professor at several Polish universities: University of Silesia in Katowice (2017–2018), University of Białystok (2019–2020), University of Łódź (2020–2021), and Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa (2021–2022). He obtained his PhD at the University of Salento with a thesis on Dante in nineteenthcentury Poland, conducting a comparison between the different translations of the Divine Comedy by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Julian Korsak, Antoni Stanisławski, and Edwad Porębowicz. He recently authored the monograph Dantes maxime mirandus in minimis. Kraszewski e Dante (2019) and is currently working on a critical edition of Kraszewski’s translation of the Divine Comedy. His research interests focus on Polish literature, cultural relationships between Italy and Poland and poetic translation.
Krystyna Jaworska is Full Professor of Polish Language and Literature at the University of Turin. Her main areas of research include the literature of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Polish emigration with particular reference to the Romantic period and the consequences of World War II on literary activity. Other research interests include contemporary poetry, travel literature and cultural connections between Italy and Poland. She is the author of over 150 publications, including the monographs Poeti e patrioti polacchi nell’Italia risorgimentale (Polish Poets and Patriots in Italian Risorgimento, 2012) and Dalla deportazione all’esilio. Percorsi nella letteratura polacca della seconda guerra mondiale (From Deportation to Exile. Paths in Polish World War II Literature, 2019). She has translated and edited Adam Zagajewski’s anthology of poems Dalla vita degli oggetti (From the Life of Objects, 2012), edited Gustaw Herling’s selected writings Etica e letteratura (Ethics and Literature, 2019), and curated several historical exhibitions dedicated to Polish presences in Italy. In 2007 she received the Gold Medal for Merit to Culture “Gloria Artis” and in 2014, the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.
Tomasz Jędrzejewski is Assistant Professor in the Institute of Polish Literature, University of Warsaw. His research focuses on European Classicism, Rococo, Sentimentalism, Romanticism, as well as the relations between press and literature. His main publications include Literatura w warszawskiej prasie kulturalnej pogranicza oświecenia i romantyzmu (Literature in the Warsaw Culture Press at the Turn of Enlightenment and
Romanticism, 2016), Czytanie Dziadów w czterech częściach (Reading of Forefathers’ Eve in the Four Parts, 2018), and Blednący atrament. Polskie rokoko literackie lat 1795–1830 na tle europejskim (Fading Ink. Polish Literary Rococo of the Years 1795–1830 against the European Background, 2022).
Luigi Marinelli is Full Professor of Slavistics – Polish Language and Literature at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of “Sapienza” University in Rome. He is the author of more than 250 publications in several languages, on the theory of literature and translation studies, Polish and Slavic comparative studies, Polish-Italian interrelations, Polish culture and literature from the Middle Ages to the last decades. He is Doctor honoris causa of the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) and the Polish Academy of Learning (PAU), and an honorary member of the Literary Association “Adam Mickiewicz” – Warsaw and of the Ambrosiana Academy – Milan. He has translated literary works by Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński, Maria Wirtemberska, Ignacy Krasicki, Aleksander Wat, Czesław Miłosz, Tadeusz Kantor, Stanisław Lem and others from Polish into Italian.
Leonardo Masi studied Polish language and literature at the Universities of Florence and Milan and Music at the Florence Conservatory. He currently works at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, where he headed the Department of Italian Studies for several years. His main research fields are the relationships between literature and music, ItalianPolish relations, and translation practices. He has authored several books and essays on, for example, Karol Szymanowski, Stanisław Brzozowski, Federico Fellini, Franco Fortini, Italian and Polish opera, contemporary poetry and popular music. He has translated into Italian some of the most important contemporary Polish authors (Tomasz Różycki, Krzysztof Karasek, Wojciech Bonowicz, Krystyna Dąbrowska, Witold Szabłowski).
Marcello Piacentini received his PhD in Slavistics in 2001 with a dissertation on medieval studies. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Polish Language and Literature at the University of Padua (Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies). He has long been a member of the editorial board of the journal Ricerche Slavistiche, and more recently of Studi Slavistici. His main research field concerns medieval Polish literature in relation to European literature in Latin, with a special focus on apocryphal literature and Polish translation of Johannes from Hildesheim Historia Trium Regum. Other fields of interest include cultural and literary relations between Poland and Italy, and Polish literature of the 1950s and 1960s (e.g. the prose of Marek Hłasko, and the Polish “New Wave”).
Notes on Contributors xi
Marcin Wyrembelski holds a degree in Italian philology from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, and is currently a lecturer in Polish language at the University of Florence. His research interests focus on Italian and Polish literature of the twentieth century and the art of translation, as well as teaching Polish as a foreign language. He is a translator of Italian fiction and non-fiction prose into Polish (Erri De Luca, Italo Calvino, Tiziano Terzani, Emilio Salgari) and Polish literature into Italian (Bogdan Wojdowski, Anna Frajlich, Henryk Grynberg, Anna Świrszczyńska). He has also conceived and coordinated several translation projects aimed at students of Polish and Italian.
Acknowledgments
Our sincere thanks go to Gerri Kimber for the proofreading of Andrea Ceccherelli’s introduction and essay – “From parody to polemical pamphlet: Gombrowiczian deformations of Dante,” as well as Luigi Marinelli’s essay – “On Czesław Miłosz’s debt to Dante;” to Joanna Pottle for the proofreading of Francesco Cabras’ essay – “Dante in Norwid’s Prayer Book”; to Alex Petrocchi and Sarah Masden for the proofreading of Andrea De Carlo’s essay – “Echoes of Inferno V in Kraszewski’s narrative and lyrical work”; to Neal Putt for the proofreading of Marcello Piacentini’s essay – “What Dante owes to Stanisław Barańczak”; to Jessica Sirotin for the proofreading of Leonardo Masi’s essay – “Dante in twentyfirst-century Poland: the case of Jarosław Mikołajewski.” Thanks go to John Trzeciak for reading and commenting on a late draft of Krystyna Jaworska’s essay – “Słowacki’s Poem of Piast Dantyszek, or the macabre despair of a father-land.”
Sincere thanks go to Przemysław Batorski for translating Tomasz Jędrzejewski’s essay – “Dante and Mickiewicz. The story of a common journey” and to Caroline Swinton for translating Marina Ciccarini’s essay – “Reason and will: Dante and Krasiński, a comparison.” Furthermore, regarding the latter, special thanks go to Nina Taylor-Terlecka for the translations of quotations from Zygmunt Krasiński’s works.
Special thanks go to the Polish Institute in Rome for supporting the project in its initial phase.
Tomasz Jędrzejewski’s text, “Dante and Mickiewicz. The story of a common journey,” was prepared within the research project “Kultura literacka polskiego rokoka lat 1795–1830 na tle europejskim” [The Literary Culture of the Polish Rococo in a European Perspective, 1795–1830], No 2016/23/D/HS2/01119, funded by the National Science Centre, Poland.
In the whole volume quotations from the Divine Comedy are reported along The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. The Italian Text with a
Acknowledgments xiii
Translation in English Blank Verse and a Commentary by Courtney Langdon, 3 volumes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918, 1920, 1921, available online: https://oll.libertyfund.org//title/alighieri-the-div ine-comedy-in-3-vols-langdon-trans
Unless otherwise noted, all other translations are by the authors of the essays.
Inhuman, transhuman, posthuman
An introduction to Polish Danteism over the centuries
Andrea Ceccherelli
There is Dantology and there is Danteism. The former is a scholarly discipline cultivated by academia; the latter mainly concerns artists and writers and is conveyed by intertextual allusions and various types of reworking. The boundaries between Dantology and Danteism are not always clearcut – translators, for example, occupy a rather liminal position between both disciplines – but what is important, beyond any nominal distinction, is that every act of engaging with Dante occupies a precise moment in time: Dante’s time for scholars, and their own time for writers. To put it another way: the scholars’ time is chronos – objective time; the writers’ time is kairos – occasion, where actualization prevails over reconstruction, the Mickiewiczian “feeling” over the “lens and the eye of the sage,” giving rise to unpredictable creative combinations. In the vector space constituted by Dante’s interpretations, the writers’ vectors are oriented towards the present, to “contemporaneity,” which is always a fluid, mobile concept (Mościcki 2022). Dante’s work can therefore be likened to a prism, refracting the light projected onto it from different angles here and now.
This is true at all times and in all places. As David Damrosch affirms, drawing on Wai Chee Dimock,
Dante’s poem changes shape as it crosses borders: it is a fundamentally different work abroad, and even in Italy it was a very different work for Italo Calvino and Primo Levi in the twentieth century than it was for Boccaccio in the fourteenth. Yet the Commedia’s effects will always be shaped by the reader’s powerful sense of it as a poem from a very different time and place from our own.
(Damrosch 2003, 140)
In Poland, Dante was only truly discovered in the early nineteenth century. This is not to say that he was not known before; occasional references had occurred as early as the fifteenth century (Litwornia 2005), but it was not until the Romantics that a fruitful intertextual dialogue with him
DOI: 10.4324/9781003333524-1
was engendered. All four of the Polish Romantic “bards” – Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Krasiński, and Norwid – offer traces of a profound reading of Dante in their poetic works (Kuciak 2003). Indeed, two of them –Mickiewicz and Norwid – even tried their hand at translating fragments of the Divine Comedy, inaugurating a tradition culminating in the recently acclaimed, innovative version by Jarosław Mikołajewski. Dante’s work has continued to inspire many prominent Polish writers up to the present day, including Miłosz and Gombrowicz.
The purpose of this volume, however, is not to formulate a history of Polish Danteism. Other scholars have recently made valuable contributions in this regard (Marinelli 2018 and 2022), combining the ability to synthesize whilst at the same time indicating possible new paths for research. What we want to present here is a series of “encounters,” substantiated by acts of reading that have had creative relapses, encased within multiple traditions (national or international, monoauthorial or pluriauthorial, linear or rhizomatic), but which nevertheless are to be viewed as individual, unique and unrepeatable hermeneutic acts. Luigi Marinelli (2022 but also here) frames Polish Danteism within a transnational network made up of lines, nodes, and intertextual vortices; an approach that, in the perspective of a world literature that is increasingly global, opens up interesting perspectives of inquiry. If we imagine the worldwide phenomenon of Danteism as a complex, interconnected universe conventionally divided into constellations, then Polish Danteism becomes just one of these constellations, alongside English, Russian, etc. In this perspective, interpretive nexuses form horizontal and vertical configurations within the same linguistic-cultural tradition, which is, however, renewed and fertilized by transversal grafts from different fields. We must take into account that Dante, in Poland as elsewhere, features not only within the strand of Italianism, of which he constitutes one of the main chapters from the nineteenth century onward, but in addition is perceived as a component of world literature, functioning independently as the “center of the Western canon” (Harold Bloom) alongside Shakespeare. This is confirmed by Gombrowicz himself, Dante’s main “rival,” and by the crime scene in his Diary, where before the assassination Dante and Shakespeare often appear side by side.
Far from being conceived as a traditional review of Dante’s reception in terms of translations and scholarly output (Preisner 1957), the present volume stands rather as a reconstruction of individual artistic and intellectual dialogues with Dante and about Dante, that have taken place over two centuries, from the early nineteenth century to the present. Why have Polish writers been inspired by Dante? What motifs have they used? How have they interpreted them? What role has the figure of the Italian poet himself played in their work? These are some of the questions the authors
of the various chapters try to resolve. Here, the focus is placed on specific reading adventures. Hermeneutic encounters. Lively, even bitterly polemical dialogues with Dante by writers who are not interested in returning Dante to us in his historical dimension, but rather in bringing him to life, reading him in their own time, within their own perspectives and reflections on life and art. Such an approach, aimed at privileging the hermeneutic dimension, precisely intends to account for those “encounters” that have led to a variety of original interpretations, inspirations, and intertextual references.
The first chapter of the volume is devoted to the father of modern Polish literature, Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855). Here, Tomasz Jędrzejewski effectively reconstructs the function of Dantean references via the different stages of the poet’s life, distinguishing between an initial – let’s say – trendy usage, falling within the typical frame of reference of the Romantic period, and a later more personal adherence embedded in Mickiewicz’s existential experience and moral, historical-political, and theological reflections. Next, Krystyna Jaworska focuses on one of the three Dante poems by the most intertextually Dantean of Polish poets, Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849). She reveals the ways in which Słowacki reworks Dantean motifs for the purpose of actualization, concerning both the role of the poet and the situation of Polish society at the time, in an overt game of grotesque adaptation, even down to the protagonist, Piast Dantyszek, where Piast is the name of the legendary founder of the first Polish dynasty, and Dantyszek means “little Dante.” Marina Ciccarini in turn offers a comparative analysis of the evolution of Zygmunt Krasiński’s (1812–1859) philosophy of history, an author so imbued with Danteism that he gave his masterpiece, written at the age of just twenty, the ironic title of The Undivine Comedy. It is natural for the Romantics to read their own experiences within a Dantean interpretive key, as, for example, does Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821–1883), a prisoner of Prussian jails; but for him it is no longer Hell that is the horizon of reference, immutable and eternal, but rather Purgatory, a transitory state that prefigures elevation and liberation, as Francesco Cabras explains in an essay that has the atout of submitting to interpretation not only the explicit but even more importantly the implicit intertextuality, that is, the significant lacunae.
In the post-Romantic period, two cosmopolitan personalities, belonging to the history not only of Danteism but also of Dantology, encountered Dante on a transnational level. Firstly, the novelist Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–1887), translated into Polish the entire Divine Comedy (without publishing it), as well as devoting a series of successful “lectures” to it in German. His relationship with Dante is absolutely central to his oeuvre and is reflected in numerous intertextual references, traced by Andrea De Carlo with particular attention to the rewritings of
the Paolo and Francesca motif. Secondly, Julian Klaczko (1825–1906), was an émigré critic whose reading of Dante – contained in the famous Florentine Evenings, appreciated by Benedetto Croce – is analyzed by Luca Bernardini beginning with some early writings specifically dedicated to Dante, and culminating in a complex perspective of both historicizing and actualizing the great Florentine.
Reading Dante also influenced many eminent twentieth-century writers, commencing with Stanisław Vincenz (1888–1971), whose essays later inspired other writers, such as Czesław Miłosz (Ceccherelli 2007 and 2012). As Lorenzo Costantino points out, Vincenz outlined a multifaceted portrait of Dante as an exiled poet, a political poet, a poet evoking the world of the dead, a poet of popular myths, a poet of tolerance, and above all a champion of the universalism and multiculturalism that are for Vincenz the basis of an idea of Europe characterized by dialogue, the defense of minority cultures, and tolerance. In turn, Marcin Wyrembelski analyzes the Dantean motifs in the works of Teodor Parnicki (1908–1988), with a special focus on his most renowned historical novel, Only Beatrice, set in fourteenth-century Florence, highlighting some possible interpretive paths in a Dantean key, isolated within the forest of symbols, references, and allusions that characterize Parnicki’s prose.
Twentieth-century Polish Danteism can boast of such great writers as Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969), who attacked Dante in a controversial pamphlet that aroused scandalized reactions oscillating between blatant indignation and embarrassed silence, and Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004), who repeatedly referred to Dante in his reflections on poetry and metaphysical imagination. The presence and function of Dante in Gombrowicz’s work is the focus of Andrea Ceccherelli’s essay, beginning with the novel Ferdydurke, in which he highlights the overt but also covert presence of Dante, going so far as to interpret it as a “degraded Commedia,” to the pages of the 1966 Diary, which hide a philological mystification, since Gombrowicz disguises Dante before blatantly “correcting” him, so that he performs a double rewriting of the incipit of Inferno III: the first dissimulated, the second declared. Miłosz’s Danteism – particularly intense and enduring, founded not on an episodic encounter, not on this or that borrowing or adaptation, but rather on a debt of reflection, accumulated over many years of engagement – is interpreted by Luigi Marinelli against the background of intersections, or nodes, with other intertextual and cross-cultural lines involving “writers-bridges” between different cultures, all of them translingual and expatriates, such as Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Stanisław Brzozowski, Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, Oscar Milosz, and also Gombrowicz, whose arguments, expressed in a provocative way, Miłosz addressed, by tracing them back to their serious philosophical essence.
Subsequent generations have continued to engage with Dante in various ways, including translation. The most virtuosic translator of the twentieth century, Stanisław Barańczak (1946–2014), could not refrain from testing his own abilities in tackling Dante’s tercets, although his is rather a missed encounter, as Marcello Piacentini demonstrates. Jarosław Mikołajewski (1960) is the author of a recent innovative translation of the Divine Comedy, which matured over a span of more than thirty years; Leonardo Masi performs a reconnaissance of Dantean motifs in Mikołajewski’s literary production, noting how both the writer’s original work and his translation of the Commedia intersected for three decades, influencing each other and finding the closest relationship within the genre of reportage, which Mikołajewski has been cultivating under the influence of two great authorities – Dante and Ryszard Kapuściński – and which also strongly affects his translation strategy.
Such “encounters” do not, of course, exhaust Dante’s living presence in Polish literature. Elsewhere, Marinelli (2022) analyzes Dante’s sparse presence in Różewicz, Szymborska, and Herbert, in terms of an ironic reference, always recognizable within the framework of the anxiety of influence. Other names of poets are given by Leonardo Masi, such as that of Agnieszka Kuciak (1970), herself a translator of the Divine Comedy, Wojciech Wencel (1972), controversial author of religious poetry under the elective patronage of T. S. Eliot, and especially Tomasz Różycki (1970), a leading exponent of the mid generation whose work is littered with Dantean intertextual signifiers, including his recent collection The Beekeeper’s Hand (Ręka pszczelarza, 2022).
Lastly, the remarks dedicated to Dante by the 2018 Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk in an interview (still unpublished) carried out in 2021 in Bologna, reveal how Dante remains a point of reference – voluntary or involuntary, positive or negative, by apposition or opposition – even for those whose Weltanschauung is worlds apart from Dante’s humanism, having replaced the ideal of “transhumanizing” (Paradiso I, 70) with “posthumanizing.” There is no shortage of – mainly hidden – references to Dante in Tokarczuk’s work: of interest is, for example, the one contained in her “Łódź Lectures” where, commenting on The Books of Jacob, she speaks of a “purgatory land of untold stories” from which derives the history of the Frankists narrated in The Books; the idea, as she explains in the interview, is to add a terrace to Purgatory where the souls of the departed can purify themselves by telling the stories that for various reasons they could not relate during their lifetimes – alternative stories than those propounded by the ruling classes, for example narrated from the point of view of women, or of nonhuman beings and entities, such as animals, plants, and landscape elements. Comparative research has revealed several common themes that appear to be central to the works of both Tokarczuk
and Dante, although addressed in very different ways. One of them is certainly wandering. This is what Tokarczuk claims:
In a way I envy Dante, because his wanderer traveled in a world that was extremely orderly, just, a world that was a certain sensible whole. My narrator [in Flights] travels in a world that is unknowable, asymmetrical, disorderly, chaotic, baffling. One doesn’t know how to comprehend it; one doesn’t know what criteria to use to live in it. These characters: the hero Dante and my heroine-narrator are united by the fact that they are in motion, they are constantly on the move, changing more spheres, places of the world, and trying to figure out some sense of the world. While Dante succeeds, because in essence a vision of the world emerges that is extremely convincing, coherent, at the end of my book there is no definite answer. There is only the suggestion that we live in chaos, and, as in Leonardo’s painting [Saint John the Baptist] mentioned in Flights, we only see the finger that points to some order to which we have no access.
(Tokarczuk 2021)
Thinking about her own book The Lost Soul, a children’s parable whose title recalls Dante’s story in the Comedy, Tokarczuk continues her Danteinspired reflections:
What is for us today the dark forest we walk through? In the world of Dante, I think it was a search for justice, for some sense of moral order. Dante lived in a much more violent world than ours, and always the answer to the surrounding violence is a search for justice. I think that today there is less of this violence in the world, but there are other dangers. If I had to answer this question, I would say that I am someone raised on the values of the Enlightenment, so for me this dark forest and this wandering and this search that I have to undertake is about the fact that my duty is to understand the world, though not with the help of some dead, artificial tools and experiments, not with some scientism, but rather with the search for other, living points of view on this reality: animal, not human, perhaps plant; and to see the world anew once again.
(Tokarczuk 2021)
The itinerary of Polish Danteism, which began in the nineteenth century with interpretive paths characterized by internal, national connotations (Salwa 2001, 187), then opened up in the twentieth century to new hermeneutic horizons, from Vincenz’s epic dimension to Gombrowicz’s ethical scandal and Miłosz’s metaphysical nostalgia, thus culminates
(temporarily) in the year 2021, the seventh centenary of the death of the Supreme Poet, with two unprecedented stages: a revolutionary translation conceived as a “reportage from the other world” and an hermeneutic act of o/apposition under the aegis of alternative storytelling and posthuman fantasy, proving that in Poland Dante is still a living presence and, at the same time, a disturbing monument (Salwa 2001 and 2012).
References
Ceccherelli, Andrea. 2007. “Miłosz e Dante.” In Italia Polonia Europa. Scritti in memoria di Andrzej Litwornia, edited by Andrea Ceccherelli, Elżbieta Jastrzębowska, Luigi Marinelli, Marcello Piacentini, Anton Maria Raffo, and Giorgio Ziffer, 98–113. Roma: Accademia Polacca delle Scienze Biblioteca e Centro di Studi a Roma.
Ceccherelli, Andrea. 2012. “Poeta zaświatu przedstawionego: Dante u Miłosza.” Świat Tekstów. Rocznik Słupski, no. 10, 165–178.
Damrosch, David. 2003. What is World Literature? Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Kuciak, Agnieszka. 2003. Dante Romantyków. Recepcja Boskiej Komedii u Mickiewicza, Słowackiego, Krasińsiego i Norwida. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM.
Litwornia, Andrzej. 2005. “Dantego któż się odważy tłumaczyć?”. Studia o recepcji Dantego w Polsce. Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN.
Marinelli, Luigi. 2018. “Polish Dantism between Epic and Ethics.” Roczniki Humanistyczne 66 (1): 33–71.
Marinelli, Luigi. 2022. Noster hic est Dantes. Su Dante e il dantismo in Polonia. Roma: Lithos Editore.
Mościcki, Paweł. 2022. Wyższa aktualność. O współczesności Dantego. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Preisner, Walerian. 1957. Dante i jego dzieła w Polsce. Bibliografia krytyczna z historycznym wstępem. Toruń: Towarzystwo Naukowe w Toruniu.
Salwa, Piotr. 2001. “Dante in Polonia: una presenza viva?” Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, no. 119, 187–202. Salwa, Piotr. 2012. “Dante in Poland: A Disturbing Monument.” In Like Doves Summoned by Desire. Dante’s New Life in the 20th Century Literature and Cinema. Essays in Memory of Amilcare Iannucci, edited by Massimo Ciavolella and Gianluca Rizzo, 219–238. New York: Agincourt Press. Tokarczuk, Olga. 2021. “Olga Tokarczuk incontra Dante [Olga Tokarczuk encounters Dante].” An interview conducted by Andrea Ceccherelli on June 9, 2021, Bologna, Sala dell’Archiginnasio. Unpublished.
1 Dante and Mickiewicz
The story of a common journey
Tomasz Jędrzejewski
Approaches to Mickiewicz’s Danteism. A reconnaissance
Several studies have been written on the Dante-Mickiewicz relationship. In the late nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century, Lucjan Siemieński (1880), Ignacy Chrzanowski (1921), Juliusz Kleiner (1921, 1930), and Wincenty Lutosławski (1937) devoted works to this issue. The findings of researchers from this period are crowned and supplemented by Zygmunt Sitnicki’s (1948) extensive article “Mickiewicz and Dante.” Sitnicki was primarily interested in identifying the motivic similarities between Mickiewicz’s works and the Divine Comedy. The researcher pointed out many such similarities, which led him to a bold conclusion:
The above findings have serious consequences for the genesis of both our poet’s own work and the entire Romantic poetry in Poland. For it is known that in the study of literature there is still a lingering view that this poetry derives primarily from the Germanic spirit. … We have found out … that the “starting point” for Mickiewicz was also dantemania, the beginnings of which should be traced back at least to the spring of 1820. … It follows that the author of the Divine Comedy can be rightly considered, if not the first, then at least one of the first “godfathers” of Polish Romanticism.
(Sitnicki 1948, 372–73)
The scholar argued that the Polish poet found an important source of inspiration in Dante’s work almost throughout his entire creative activity. These recognitions made within the methodological framework of the theory of influence aroused the suspicions of other literary historians: a lot of alleged evidence of Mickiewicz’s fascination with Dante – both in terms of the motifs used and the conceptual assumptions of individual works –could have originated in the so-called spirit of the age or constituted a
DOI: 10.4324/9781003333524-2
Dante and Mickiewicz 9
Dantean motif processed by other Romantic poets. These objections were noted by later scholars of Danteism in Polish Romantic literature (Brahmer 1958; Szmydtowa 1964; Stefanowska 1976; Kuciak 2003). A significant part of Sitnicki’s claims were questioned or outright rejected. In any case, there can be no question of Dantemania or Dantean beginning of Polish Romanticism. And not only because it is not visible in Mickiewicz’s youthful texts, but also because Dante appears no more than marginally in Polish poetry and criticism around 1820. It is also difficult to agree with Sitnicki’s statement that the Italian writer was a patron to the Polish poet in the creation of all major poems and dramas (the author of the article “Mickiewicz and Dante” does not see Dante’s influence only in the poem Grażyna) and many minor works.
After the Second World War, the issue was revisited several times. Zofia Szmydtowa (1964) wrote about the relationship between Dante and Mickiewicz in her essay “Dante and Polish Romanticism” and Zofia Stefanowska (1976) in her study “On the Dantesqueness of the third part of ‘Forefathers Eve’.” Both texts focus on Dresden Forefathers’ Eve, where motifs and ideas of real or alleged Dantean origin are most abundant. Szmydtowa and Stefanowska, skeptical of the scale of Sitnicki’s theses, assumed that if we wanted to find Danteism in Mickiewicz, we should look for it in the third part of the drama. Szmydtowa compared the vision of Father Peter (announcement of the mysterious “Forty and Four”) with the prophecy of the coming of the future savior of Italy (“a Five Hundred Ten and Five sent forth by God,” Purgatorio XXXIII, 43). The intercession of the mother praying for Konrad reminded the researcher of Beatrice’s prayer, and Mickiewicz’s hero giving himself to the enemy’s hands was associated with Dante’s wandering around the circles of Hell and Purgatory, thanks to which the hero of the Divine Comedy cleansed himself of sin and emerged from the tangled ways of life on a straight path of salvation (Canto XXIV of Paradise). Other motivic parallels were added to the indicated convergences: like the devils from the eighth circle of Hell (Canto XXI), Mickiewicz’s devils quarrel over the Senator’s soul. “So, the analogies concern the general concept of Konrad’s spiritual rebirth, the atmosphere of some images, the portrayal of devils and their tricks,” concludes Szmydtowa (1964, 327). Stefanowska, on the other hand, sees a Dantean provenance in the scenes of the Doctor’s and Bajkow’s torments in hell, but at the same time legitimately asks whether representations of hellish horror must necessarily refer us to the Divine Comedy (Inferno XXV), or whether other sources (for example local folk poetry) were not a closer inspiration for the poet (Stefanowska 1976, 66). Particularly important seems to me Stefanowska’s recognition of the historiosophical dimension of Forefathers’ Eve read in the perspective of the Christian interpretation of history, which is also present in the Divine Comedy. At
this point, I am only signaling this problem and will return to it later in the study.
The issue of Mickiewicz’s Danteism was most extensively examined by Agnieszka Kuciak (2003). The researcher found a middle way between the bold approach of Sitnicki and the cautious approach of Szmydtowa and Stefanowska. In addition to drawing motivic, ideological, and imaginative parallels between Alighieri and the Polish authors, Kuciak’s book features valuable pieces of interpretation. The scholar meticulously confronted the texts of Dante and, among others, Mickiewicz, discussed the ways in which the Polish author processes various ideas potentially taken from Dante, and pointed to the shifts of meaning resulting from Mickiewicz’s modification of Dantean motifs. Among other things, she conducted a convincing interpretation of the poem “I Dreamt of Winter…” (“Śniła się zima…”), inspired by fragments of the Divine Comedy (Cantos XXX–XXXIII of Purgatorio). Kuciak’s unifying conclusion sounds restrained. The researcher repeats Stefanowska’s balanced opinion: the similarities we see between the Divine Comedy and Mickiewicz’s work are often possible without the relationship of influence:
there is a certain pressure on his [Mickiewicz’s] “Dantesqueness” in the state of research, not devoid of justification, although sometimes it is … analogy rather than tangible “influence.” Dante is one of the “Romantics”: what connects [them] with him is the feeling of a living bond between the living and the dead (Forefathers’ Eve), the idealization of love (Part IV of Forefathers’ Eve, I Dreamt of Winter), the importance of faith, mysticism, universalism, messianism.
(Kuciak 2003, 27)
In this study, I would like to draw attention to an issue that, in my opinion, has not been sufficiently taken into account in the previous descriptions of Mickiewicz’s Danteism. I will be interested in how the life situation of the Polish poet, the circles in which he moved and the political events he witnessed influenced the attitude towards Dante and the Divine Comedy. Therefore, my intention is not exclusively philological (that is, it is not based – as in the case of Sitnicki’s article or Kuciak’s monograph – on the confrontation of texts and the verification of the source of inspiration). I try to delve into the problems of Mickiewicz’s evolving creative awareness, his approach to literary tradition and his self-creation – of course considered from the Dantological point of view. I will base my study on specific texts, but in the analysis I will focus on how the influence of the Divine Comedy on the work of the author of Forefathers’ Eve changed over time due to different biographical and historical determinants. I would like to highlight
Dante and Mickiewicz 11
the dynamics of Mickiewicz’s perception (and artistic use) of Dante’s work. I will distinguish three phases of Danteism, or – metaphorically speaking – three stages of Mickiewicz’s common journey with Dante. For the Polish poet, during the Vilnius-Kaunas period Dante is someone other than Dante read in Russia and later during the emigration.
First part of the common journey: the Divine Comedy among “different pieces of russet cloth”
I will recall a few facts about Dante’s reception in Vilnius in Mickiewicz’s time (after 1815). A sign of interest in Alighieri’s work in the literature of Polish Romanticism is Józef Sękowski’s publication in the journal Dziennik Wileński. It was an excerpt from his translation of Inferno, preceded by a note about the life and poetry of the author of the Divine Comedy (Sękowski 1817). Sękowski’s work seems episodic. The Italian genius was not admired by Polish writers of the late Enlightenment (Kuciak 2003, 15–16; Litwornia 2005a, 108–39; Marinelli 2018). It is true that Dante was not criticized too much, but he was not given much attention either. In Vilnius, a few concise favorable remarks about Dante were recorded by Euzebiusz Słowacki in an academic lecture on “the theory of taste” (written several years before Sękowski’s translation):
The first eminent author of epic poetry in the common language was Dante Alighieri, who wrote a poem entitled Comedy. This poem consists of one hundred songs placed in three divisions, that is: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Although the composition of the work contradicts the rules of the epic, and often insults sense and taste, it is nevertheless rich in poetic beauties of the first order.
(Słowacki 1826, 111)
Dante is mentioned by Leon Borowski, Słowacki’s successor to the chair of rhetoric and poetry, in his competition thesis of 1820:
This strange mixture of the teachings of the Catholic religion with the inventions of the ancient world is evidently seen in Dante’s Comedy and proves a considerable change in the popular way of thinking at that time. This spirit of freedom acted in a still more fortunate way for Petrarch’s talent.
(Borowski 1972, 68)
And further: “Today we are struck by the multitude of poetic freedoms in Dante’s Comedy, which, however, in their time made the poet very
Tomasz Jędrzejewski
popular. … In Dante’s strange work emerged all his genius, his heart, passions, age and learning” (ibid., 69–73). We know from the memoirs of Antoni Edward Odyniec (1884, 154) that Borowski praised the translation of the Divine Comedy by Julian Korsak: “[Korsak] especially immortalized his name in national literature with his rhymed translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, about which Borowski once said: ‘it smells like Dante’.” However, we do not know the exact time when Borowski said his compliment, and we do not know when Korsak began his translation work. It could not have happened before 1823, when the young poet from Słonim entered the Faculty of Literature and Liberal Arts of Vilnius University, and not after 1826, when Korsak left Vilnius (Makowiecka 1968–9; Litwornia 2005a, 171–77).
Generally speaking, in Vilnius of Mickiewicz’s time (1815–1824) there were attempts to read Dante by both scholars and translators, but their commentaries are rare and small in volume. In the statements of poetry theorists, appreciation for Alighieri is mixed with the reserve characteristic of those enlightened towards the medieval “insult of taste.” The Divine Comedy does not evoke any special emotions. This is evidenced by the fact that in the fifteen years of the existence of Dziennik Wileński (1815–1830), the most important Vilnius journal publishing literature and literary criticism, Dante appeared in its pages only once! Jan Śniadecki does not refer to Dante in his 1819 anti-Romantic diatribe, which criticized the medieval lack of taste (Śniadecki 1819).
How and when did Dante come into Mickiewicz’s awareness and work? What is certain is that during his studies at the Vilnius University, the Polish poet at least came across the Divine Comedy. It could have been during the classes of Borowski. Luigi Capelli, the lecturer of Italian literature (and law), probably played a role. This role was not great, because in his course the scholar downplayed the importance of the poem. “Unfortunately, it is not entirely known what Professor Luigi Capelli passed on to his students from Dante, who certainly had some influence on Mickiewicz’s general knowledge of Italian literature. Dante was not polished enough to introduce him to Vilnius students,” notes Kuciak (2003, 16). Neither from Borowski, nor from Capelli, nor from other figures did the young poet from Vilnius gain sympathy for the Italian master. In the correspondence and in other materials of the Society of Philomaths, there are no reflections on Dante. Nevertheless, the poet must have had some awareness of Dante’s importance around 1820, since in the preface to the first volume of Poetry (Poezje) from 1822 he was able to paint a broad picture of the emergence of Romanticism in European culture (Salvadè 2017). Mickiewicz mentions Dante’s work in one sentence of the preface, distancing himself from the schematic classifications dividing writers of all eras into Classical and Romantic:
Dante and Mickiewicz 13
Then, on the one hand, the Iliad stands next to the Henriad, hymns in honor of the Olympian heroes next to French odes to Posterity, to Time, etc.; on the other side, Heldenbuch and Nibelungen meet Dante’s Divine Comedy and Schiller’s songs. (Mickiewicz 1999, 124–25)
In the preface, the poet also included another sentence which is of key importance from the Dantological point of view. Alighieri’s name is not mentioned, but Mickiewicz points out that the true Romanticism is that which existed in the Middle Ages: “properly Romantic works, in the full sense of the word, should be sought among the writings of the poets of the Middle Ages” (Mickiewicz 1999, 124). Thus, Dante may be regarded as one of the most outstanding representatives of the “proper” Romanticism, i.e. the Romanticism of the Middle Ages. And it is worth emphasizing that in the Vilnius-Kaunas period, Mickiewicz had a complex attitude towards these medieval traditions (Sitnicki 1948, 336).1 He was interested in them, but rather as a resource of motifs suitable for artistic modification; there is no longing for the distant past. The author of Ballads and Romances then remained a student of his enlightened teachers, for whom the progress of arts and sciences, “crafts and skills,” is of civilizational value. Among his favorite authors are not the poets of “proper” Romanticism, including Dante, but representatives of its second, modern variety: Friedrich Schiller and George Byron (Witkowska 1962). I would be inclined to the thesis that young Mickiewicz recognized the greatness of the Italian poet, but it was not a greatness that had a strong influence on the work of this outstanding student at Vilnius University. The similarity of selected motifs from the ballads (such as evocations of hell’s torments) probably do not have Dantean provenance. A closer context here seems to be the inspirations of folk art mixed with the traditions of the European Gothic ballad (Brahmer 1958; Pluta 2017, 13–83).
More questions and doubts arise when defining the relation of the Vilnius-Kaunas Forefathers’ Eve to Dante’s work. The second part of the drama resembles – as Józef Tretiak noticed – a miniature Divine Comedy (Tretiak 1884, 49). There are literary evocations of three spheres of posthumous life: hell, purgatory and paradise. There are also characters that resemble Dantean figures, such as the Specter, a master who was heartless towards peasants (Kleiner 1948, 374). Although the Vilnius-Kaunas Forefathers’ Eve shows some similarities with Dante’s work, they are still not clear evidence of Mickiewicz’s interest in the Divine Comedy. Moreover, we encounter significant discrepancies. Kuciak sums up:
Given the rather general … similarity of the second part of Forefathers’ Eve to the Divine Comedy in the idea of the bond between the
living and the dead and intercession … it is impossible not to notice how different its eschatological concept is from Dante’s. Among Mickiewicz’s needy souls there are not only purgatory souls, but also souls close to paradise and hell, and they need not only prayers, but also food and experiences (love, care, bitterness) that would complete their unfulfilled existence.
(Kuciak 2003, 19–20)
Even if we recognize in Mickiewicz’s images the artistic debt owed to Dante – the theme of “villainous books” (“książki zbójeckie”) from the fourth part of the drama can be associated with Dante’s story of Paolo and Francesca from Inferno, V (Kleiner 1948, 376; Sitnicki 1948, 342; Kuciak 2003, 20) – it is worth remembering a more general matter. Regardless of the number of identified references, in the VilniusKaunas Forefathers’ Eve Mickiewicz “makes use” of Dante, just as in this period he makes use of all other authors. The young poet does not explore the mysteries of the afterlife and keeps a distance from Romantic metaphysics. He juxtaposes, “stitches” poets’ texts, plays with existing conventions, mixes the high with the low. As Michał Kuziak pointed out, the poet struggles with the modern problem of the disintegration of language, which is unable to describe the modern world (the one from the beginning of the nineteenth century) and individual experience (Kuziak 2013). For the young Mickiewicz, there is no single book explaining the world and the condition of human being – neither the Bible nor any other canonical text of culture. The idea of the Book was replaced by “villainous books.” In the textual universe of the young Mickiewicz, Dante functions like other authors, from whose works one can detach –using the language of Forefathers’ Eve – some “different pieces of russet cloth” (“różne kawałki sukmany”). If Dante appears, fragments of his work are placed in a mosaic of texts from various eras and literatures. I think that in the Vilnius-Kaunas period, Mickiewicz did not find anything particularly absorbing in Alighieri’s work. The Italian author turned out to be, firstly, antiquated, secondly, culturally distant, thirdly, too monumental. It is significant that in Magdalena Bąk’s monograph (2004) aimed at showing Mickiewicz’s reading horizons in the Vilnius period, the name of Dante does not appear even once (for comparison, Byron appears 60 times and Schiller 100 times). The only unquestionable reference to Alighieri’s poetry – the motto of an occasional poem for Maryla Wereszczakówna (“There is no greater pain than to remember happy days in day of misery,” Inferno V, 121–123, quoted in Italian) –does not seem to me particularly original and would be possible without reading the Divine Comedy at all.
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
The
Project Gutenberg eBook of A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 5
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: A system of practical medicine. By American authors. Vol. 5 Diseases of the nervous system
Editor: William Pepper Louis Starr
Release date: October 16, 2023 [eBook #71892]
Language: English
Original publication: Philadelphia: Lea Brothers & Co, 1886
Credits: Ron Swanson
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SYSTEM OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE. BY AMERICAN AUTHORS. VOL. 5 ***
A SYSTEM OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE.
BY
AMERICAN AUTHORS.
EDITED BY
WILLIAM PEPPER, M.D., LL.D.,
PROVOST AND PROFESSOR OF THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MEDICINE AND OF CLINICAL MEDICINE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
ASSISTED BY
LOUIS STARR, M.D.,
CLINICAL
PROFESSOR OF DISEASES OF CHILDREN IN THE HOSPITAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
VOLUME V.
DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
PHILADELPHIA: LEA BROTHERS & CO. 1886.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by
LEA BROTHERS & CO.,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. All rights reserved.
WESTCOTT & THOMSON, Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Philada.
WILLIAM J. DORNAN, Printer, Philada.
VALEDICTORY.
In presenting to the profession the fifth and concluding volume of the “SYSTEM OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE BY AMERICAN AUTHORS,” the Editor may be permitted to refer briefly to labors which for years have called forth his strenuous endeavors. The original prospectus of the work was issued in 1881. The first volume was published in January, 1885; the second, in May, 1885; the third, in September, 1885; and the fourth, in February, 1886. In view of the delays inevitable in large and complicated literary enterprises, such unusual punctuality reflects credit alike on the zeal of the contributors and the energy and resources of the publishers. The duties of the Editor have been lightened and rendered agreeable by the unvarying courtesy and cordial co-operation of all connected with him in the undertaking; and he has been amply rewarded by the realization of his hopes in the favorable reception accorded to the successive volumes by the profession on both sides of the Atlantic. The plan of the work has been strictly adhered to, and the articles promised have been furnished without exception, although in a very few cases circumstances required a change in the authorship. Special mention is due to Dr. Louis Starr and to Dr. Judson Daland for the very valuable assistance they have rendered.
The only alloy to the pleasure which the Editor has had in the progress of the work has been the removal by death of so many of his distinguished collaborators: such men as Flint, Van Buren, Armor, Bemiss, and Elsberg will long be mourned by the profession.
The number of articles is 185, written by 99 authors, covering, with indexes, about 5600 pages, and throughout its whole extent the original purpose has been kept constantly in view, that the practical
character of the work should adapt it specially to the needs of the general practitioner. In conclusion, the Editor feels that it is a subject of congratulation that through the combination of so many leading members of the profession it has been rendered possible to present in this work, for the first time, the entire subject of practical medicine treated in a manner truly representative of the American School.
P
HILADELPHIA
, JUNE, 1886.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME V.
DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
GENERAL SEMEIOLOGY OF DISEASES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM; DATA OF DIAGNOSIS. By E. C. SEGUIN, M.D.
THE LOCALIZATION OF LESIONS IN THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. By E. C. SEGUIN, M.D.
MENTAL DISEASES. By CHARLES F. FOLSOM, M.D.
HYSTERIA. By CHARLES K. MILLS, A.M., M.D.
HYSTERO-EPILEPSY. By CHARLES K. MILLS, A.M., M.D.
CATALEPSY. By CHARLES K. MILLS, A.M., M.D.
ECSTASY. By CHARLES K. MILLS, A.M., M.D.
NEURASTHENIA. By H. C. WOOD, M.D., LL.D.
SLEEP, AND ITS DISORDERS. By HENRY M. LYMAN, A.M., M.D.
ACUTE AFFECTIONS PRODUCED BY EXPOSURE TO HEAT. By H. C. WOOD, M.D., LL.D.
HEADACHE. By WHARTON SINKLER, M.D.
VERTIGO. By S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D.
TREMOR. By WHARTON SINKLER, M.D.
PARALYSIS AGITANS. By WHARTON SINKLER, M.D.
CHOREA. By WHARTON SINKLER, M.D.
ATHETOSIS. By WHARTON SINKLER, M.D.
LOCAL CONVULSIVE DISORDERS. By ALLAN MCLANE HAMILTON, M.D.
EPILEPSY. By ALLAN MCLANE HAMILTON, M.D.
THE NEURAL DISORDERS OF WRITERS AND ARTISANS. By MORRIS J. LEWIS, M.D.
TETANUS. By P. S. CONNER, M.D.
DISORDERS OF SPEECH. By EDWARD P. DAVIS, A.M., M.D.
ALCOHOLISM. By JAMES C. WILSON, A.M., M.D.
THE OPIUM HABIT AND KINDRED AFFECTIONS. By JAMES C. WILSON, A.M., M.D.
CHRONIC LEAD-POISONING. By JAMES C. WILSON, A.M., M.D.
PROGRESSIVE UNILATERAL FACIAL ATROPHY. By CHARLES K. MILLS, A.M., M.D.
DISEASES OF THE MEMBRANES OF THE BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD. By FRANCIS MINOT, M.D.
TUBERCULAR MENINGITIS. By FRANCIS MINOT, M.D.
CHRONIC HYDROCEPHALUS. By FRANCIS MINOT, M.D.
CONGESTION, INFLAMMATION, AND HEMORRHAGE OF THE MEMBRANES OF THE SPINAL CORD. By FRANCIS MINOT, M.D.
SPINA BIFIDA. By JOHN ASHHURST, JR., M.D.
ANÆMIA AND HYPERÆMIA OF THE BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD. By E. C. SPITZKA, M.D.
THE CHRONIC INFLAMMATORY AND DEGENERATIVE AFFECTIONS OF THE SPINAL CORD. By E. C. SPITZKA, M.D.
CONCUSSION OF THE BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD. By WILLIAM HUNT, M.D.
INTRACRANIAL HEMORRHAGE AND OCCLUSION OF THE CEREBRAL VESSELS, APOPLEXY, SOFTENING OF THE BRAIN, CEREBRAL PARALYSIS. By ROBERT T. EDES, M.D.
ATROPHY AND HYPERTROPHY OF THE BRAIN. By H. D. SCHMIDT, M.D.
SYPHILITIC AFFECTIONS OF THE NERVE-CENTRES. By H. C. WOOD, M.D., LL.D.
TUMORS OF THE BRAIN AND ITS ENVELOPES. By CHARLES K. MILLS, A.M., M.D., and JAMES HENDRIE LLOYD, A.M., M.D.
TUMORS OF THE SPINAL CORD AND ITS ENVELOPES. By CHARLES K. MILLS, A.M., M.D., and JAMES HENDRIE LLOYD, A.M., M.D.
INFANTILE SPINAL PARALYSIS. By MARY PUTNAM JACOBI, M.D.
DISEASE OF ONE LATERAL HALF OF THE SPINAL CORD. By H. D. SCHMIDT, M.D.
PROGRESSIVE LABIO-GLOSSO-LARYNGEAL PARALYSIS. By H. D. SCHMIDT, M.D.
DISEASES OF THE PERIPHERAL NERVES. By FRANCIS T. MILES, M.D.
NEURALGIA. By JAMES J. PUTNAM, M.D.
VASO-MOTOR AND TROPHIC NEUROSES.
By M. ALLEN STARR, M.D., PH.D.
INDEX
CONTRIBUTORS TO VOLUME V.
ASHHURST, JOHN, JR., M.D.,
Professor of Clinical Surgery in the University of Pennsylvania.
CONNER, P. S., M.D.,
Professor of Anatomy and Clinical Surgery in the Medical College of Ohio; Professor of Surgery, Dartmouth Medical College; Surgeon to Cincinnati and Good Samaritan Hospitals, Cincinnati.
DAVIS, EDWARD P., A.M., M.D.,
Lecturer on Physiology, Rush Medical College, Chicago, and lately Medical Superintendent of the Presbyterian Hospital, Chicago.
EDES, ROBERT T., M.D.,
Jackson Professor of Clinical Medicine in Harvard University, Boston, Mass.
FOLSOM, CHARLES F., M.D.,
Visiting Physician for Nervous and Renal Diseases, Boston City Hospital; formerly Assistant Professor of Mental Diseases in Harvard University, Boston.
HAMILTON, ALLAN MCLANE, M.D.,
Consulting Physician to the New York City Male and Female Insane Asylums; Hudson River State Asylum for the Insane; Consulting Neurologist to Hospital for Ruptured and Crippled; Attending Physician to Hospital for Nervous Diseases; Member of the New York Neurological Society.
HUNT, WILLIAM, M.D.,
Surgeon to the Pennsylvania Hospital, and to the Philadelphia Orthopædic Hospital and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases.
JACOBI, MARY PUTNAM, M.D.,
Professor of Therapeutics at the Women's Medical College, New York.
LEWIS, MORRIS J., M.D.,
Physician to the Episcopal Hospital and to the Children's Hospital; Assistant Physician to the Orthopædic Hospital and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases, Philada.
LLOYD, JAMES HENDRIE, A.M., M.D.,
Instructor in Electro-Therapeutics in the University of Pennsylvania.
LYMAN, HENRY M., A.M., M.D.,
Professor of Physiology and of Diseases of the Nervous System in Rush Medical College, Chicago; Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Woman's Hospital Medical College, Chicago; one of the Attending Physicians to the Presbyterian Hospital, Chicago, Ill.
MILES, FRANCIS T., M.D.,
Professor of Physiology and Clinical Professor of Diseases of the Nervous System, University of Maryland, Baltimore.
MILLS, CHARLES K., A.M., M.D.,
Professor of Diseases of the Mind and Nervous System in the Philadelphia Polyclinic and College for Graduates in Medicine; Lecturer on Mental Diseases in the University of Pennsylvania; Neurologist to the Philadelphia Hospital.
MINOT, FRANCIS, M.D.,
Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic in Harvard University; Physician to Massachusetts General Hospital.
MITCHELL, S. WEIR, M.D.,
Member of the National Academy of Sciences; President of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
PUTNAM, JAMES J., A.B. (Harv.), M.D. (Harv.),
Physician to Out-patients at the Massachusetts General Hospital; Clinical Instructor at Harvard Medical College.
SCHMIDT, H. D., M.D.,
Pathologist to the Charity Hospital of New Orleans.
SEGUIN, EDWARD C., M.D.,
Clinical Professor of Diseases of the Mind and Nervous System in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York City.
SINKLER, WHARTON, M.D.,
Physician to the Philadelphia Orthopædic Hospital, and Infirmary for Nervous Diseases.
SPITZKA, E. C., M.D.,
Consulting Neurologist to the North-eastern Dispensary, and Physician to the Department for Nervous Diseases of the German Poliklinik.
STARR, M. ALLEN, M.D., PH.D.,
Professor of Diseases of the Mind and Nervous System, New York Polyclinic; Attending Physician to Department of Nervous Diseases, Demilt Dispensary.
WILSON, JAMES C., A.M., M.D.,
Physician to the Philadelphia Hospital, and to the Hospital of the Jefferson College; President of the Pathological Society of Philadelphia.
WOOD, HORATIO C., M.D., LL.D.,
Clinical Professor of Diseases of the Nervous System and Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics in the University of Pennsylvania; Neurologist to the Philadelphia Hospital; Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
FIGURE
1.DIAGRAM SHOWING THE ARC FOR REFLEX ACTION
2.DIAGRAM AND TABLE SHOWING THE APPROXIMATE RELATION TO THE SPINAL NERVES OF THE VARIOUS SENSORY AND REFLEX FUNCTIONS OF THE SPINAL CORD
3.CONTRACTION OF NORMAL ABDUCTOR INDICIS WITH STRONG CURRENT (AMIDON)
4.CONTRACTION OF PARALYED MUSCLE ON THIRTY-FIRST DAY OF BELL'S PALSY OF THE FACE (AMIDON)
5.DIAGRAM OF A TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE SPINAL CORD THROUGH THE CERVICAL ENLARGEMENT
6.DIAGRAM OF A TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE SPINAL CORD THROUGH THE LUMBAR ENLARGEMENT
7.HORIZONTAL SECTION THROUGH THE CENTRE OF THE RIGHT CEREBRAL HEMISPHERE
8.DIAGRAM OF VISUAL PATHS, DESIGNED TO ILLUSTRATE SPECIALLY LEFT LATERAL HEMIANOPSIA FROM ANY LESION
9.LONGITUDINAL (SAGITTAL) SECTION THROUGH THE BRAIN, TO SHOW THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE FASCICULI OF THE INTERNAL CAPSULE
10.DIAGRAM OF THE LATERAL ASPECT OF THE CEREBRAL HEMISPHERE
11.DIAGRAM OF THE MESAL ASPECT OF THE CEREBRAL HEMISPHERE
12.TOPOGRAPHICAL LINES APPLIED TO THE EXTERNAL CONTOUR OF THE HEAD
13.TOPOGRAPHICAL LINES APPLIED TO HENLE'S FIGURE OF THE SKULL
14.THE SAME TOPOGRAPHICAL LINES APPLIED TO THE LEFT CEREBRAL HEMISPHERE IN HENLE'S SKULL
15.SPECIMENS OF HANDWRITING IN TWO CASES OF GENERAL PARALYSIS
OF THE INSANE
16.FEET OF A PATIENT WITH ACUTE MYELITIS
17.FEET OF A PATIENT WITH HYSTERICAL PARAPLEGIA
18.POSITION ASSUMED BY A HYSTERO-EPILEPTIC
19.POSITION OF CRUCIFIXION ASSUMED BY A HYSTERO-EPILEPTIC (SAME CASE AS FIG. 18)
20.POSITION ASSUMED BY A HYSTERO-EPILEPTIC (SAME CASE AS FIG. 18)
21.EXTREME OPISTHOTONOS IN A HYSTERO-EPILEPTIC (SAME CASE AS FIG. 18)
22.PRINCIPAL HYSTEROGENIC ZONES, ANTERIOR SURFACE OF THE BODY (AFTER RICHER)
23.PRINCIPAL HYSTEROGENIC ZONES, POSTERIOR SURFACE OF THE BODY (AFTER RICHER)
24.POSITION ASSUMED BY A HYSTERO-EPILEPTIC
25.OPISTHOTONOS OF TETANUS
26.CASE OF ATHETOSIS
27.LOWER FACE OF RIGHT HEMISPHERE
28.MOVEMENTS OF WRIST IN TELEGRAPHING)
29.METHOD OF WRITING ADOPTED BY A PATIENT WHO HAS MARKED SPASM OF FLEXORS OF FINGERS AND THUMB
30.TEMPERATURE CHART OF A CASE OF TUBERCULAR MENINGITIS IN A BOY EIGHT YEARS OLD
31.TRANS-SECTION OF UPPER LUMBAR CORD OF A PATIENT MODERATELY ADVANCED IN TABES DORSALIS
32.CHANGES IN THE CORD IN A CASE OF DIFFUSE SPINAL SCLEROSIS
33.CHANGES IN THE CELLS OF THE ANTERIOR HORN IN DIFFUSE SPINAL SCLEROSIS (SAME CASE AS FIG. 32)
34.SECONDARY DEGENERATION OF INTEROLIVARY LAYER
35.SECONDARY DEGENERATION OF INTEROLIVARY LAYER, CAUDAL OR DESCENDING PORTION
36.DECUSSATING DEGENERATION OF INTEROLIVARY LAYER
37.TEMPERATURE CHART OF A CASE OF CEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE
38.TEMPERATURE CHART OF A RAPID CASE OF CEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE
39.CHART SHOWING THE EXCESS OF TEMPERATURE IN A CASE OF MENINGEAL HEMORRHAGE
