- Author:
Katarzyna Majdzik
- E-mail:
katarzyna.majdzik@us.edu.pl
- Institution:
Uniwersytet Śląski
- Year of publication:
2016
- Source:
Show
- Pages:
105-121
- DOI Address:
https://doi.org/10.15804/IW.2016.07.06
- PDF:
iw/07/iw706.pdf
The discourse of space - the space of discourse. the image of the city in Druga Venecija (The other Venice: secrets of the city) by Predrag Matvejević
the author of this article reconstructs the image of Venice depicted in the novel-essay Druga Venecija (The Other Venice: Secrets of the City) by Predrag Matvejević. the novel is characterised by multilingualism (loanwords from the Italian language and its dialects) and contributions from other arts (numerous illustrations, maps, photo reprints, etc.). the discursive mechanisms shaping the impression of space and the world that is represented, as well as the nonlinguistic (visual) ways of its reproduction, are analysed in the article. the narration of the novel is deprived of plot, as it is essayistic and dehistoricised. The book incorporates different genres, combining elements of the essay, travelogue novels, encyclopaediae, and portolan charts. It is characterised by minimalism and restrained language, which are distinguishing features of Matvejević’s work. the poetics of minimalism is reflected in the fragmentation of the plot, the selectivity of themes, and the simplicity of style. the writer concentrates on presenting the details, exploring unknown areas that are overlooked in other literary descriptions of Venice. the originality of Matvejević’s creative method is based on tracking down abandoned, non-obvious, and devastated places; the book, therefore, describes the passages of the city, referring random information and fragments of other stories and legends. enumeration is the most frequent figure of speech used by the writer to describe phenomena in a synchronous and non-hierarchical way. the starting point for the considerations made in this article are the philosophical concepts of the relationship of semiotic systems and different types of art (both applied and fine) to the category of spatiality (Derrida, Rewers, eco, taine).
- Author:
Małgorzata Ewa Kowalczyk
- Institution:
Uniwersytet Wrocławski
- Year of publication:
2014
- Source:
Show
- Pages:
317-337
- DOI Address:
https://doi.org/10.15804/IW.2014.05.15
- PDF:
iw/05/iw515.pdf
POLISH WOMEN IN VENICE IN THE SECOND HALF OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. TRAVEL DIARIES OF TEOFILA KONSTANCJA MORAWSKA NÉE RADZIWIŁŁ AND KATARZYNA PLATEROWA NÉE SOSNOWSKA
Venice, one of the most enchanting cities in the world, has always been a very popular destination for travellers. For Poles who travelled through Europe in the eighteenth century, Venice was an important and frequently visited city. Polish noblewomen of that era, who travelled as frequently as their male counterparts, wrote many memoirs describing their journeys. Very few of their diaries, however, have survived to this day. Memoirs describing their Venetian escapades, rarely published, are mostly buried deep in archives and libraries. Travel diaries of Teofila Konstancja Morawska, née Radziwiłł (1738-1818) and Katarzyna Platerowa, née Sosnowska (born c. 17481832), widely considered as two of the most interesting publications describing Venice of that time, are filled with thoughtful observations of life in eighteenth-century Venice. Details about the city’s landscape and architectural artefacts, the chronicles of theatrical performances, descriptions of works of art and local cuisine and customs represent a remarkable source of information about appearances, the mentality and everything that defined the life of the eighteenth-century Venetians. Their memoirs are on a par with those written by men of their time and their observant eyes make them an extraordinary source of information about life in Venice of the eighteenth century.
- Author:
Fabio Boni
- E-mail:
fabio.boni@up.krakow.pl
- Institution:
Uniwersytet Pedagogiczny im. KEN w Krakowie, Polonia
- ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5977-7138
- Year of publication:
2021
- Source:
Show
- Pages:
87-105
- DOI Address:
https://doi.org/10.15804/IW.2021.12.1.05
- PDF:
iw/12_1/iw12105.pdf
The article presents some texts from manuscript 2284 stored at the Jagiellonian University Library in Krakow, titled Księga Kabał Królowej Sobieskiej (The Kabbalah Book of Queen Sobieska). It is a collection of unpublished texts about magic, Kabbalah, and astrology, collected by Maria Casimira Sobieska herself during her long sojourn in Italy (1699-1714). Some of the manuscript’s texts were written in Italian, most likely in Venice at the end of the 17th century, and signed by a certain Andrea Valetta, a citizen of the Most Serene Republic. Some of these texts concern natural magic, and others, Kabbalah: Acqua simpatica per scivere [sic] da lontano, Per fare l’acqua ardente, A’ far la scrittura simpatica, and Altra Acqua simpatica (104r-105v); Modo di scrivere in Zifra senza dar sospetto di Zifra and Tabella della prima scienza numerica (100r); Seconda scienza numerica (100v-101v); Trattato Per estrarre il nome del Genio (106r-113r); Regole di Cabala di Salomone Imparatale divinam[ente] da Dio (216r-222v). The work shows how, in the texts on natural magic, Valetta follows Giovanni Battista Della Porta’s theory and approach to natural magic. In the texts on Kabbalah, although he considers Kabbalah from a Christian point of view, like Pico della Mirandola, he ignores mystical and spiritual aspects—which, in Pico, are most important—focusing on practical and prophetic aspects.
- Author:
Dario Prola
- E-mail:
darioprola@uw.edu.pl
- Institution:
Uniwersytet Warszawski, Polonia
- ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6079-148X
- Year of publication:
2021
- Source:
Show
- Pages:
177-196
- DOI Address:
https://doi.org/10.15804/IW.2021.12.1.10
- PDF:
iw/12_1/iw12110.pdf
The article explores the problem of the representation of Venice in Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s poetry, starting from the short series “Tram Tickets,” from the mid-1920s, to the masterful “Ode on the Destruction of Venice,” a true farewell and poetic testament of the writer. This study seeks to define the characteristics of the city’s genius loci, tracing the relationships between romantic historicism, perceptual poetics, and the decadent aestheticism of Iwaszkiewicz. For the poet, Venice constituted a complex palimpsest where every added word necessarily had to be negotiated with a complex and cumbersome tradition of texts and images; every attempt to define the nature of the city implied a Sisyphean effort to find a pure and non-conditioned look. For this reason, he was convinced that Venice could be described only indirectly, through the rhetorical tools—similes, synaesthesia, metaphors —offered by poetic language. Iwaszkiewicz’s representation of Venice appears to be rooted in particular in the modernist tradition and in its complex network of cultural and symbolic references. The essay highlights the influence of John Keats and Aleksandr Blok, as well as the specific interpretation of the figures of Endymion and Salome, symbols of eternal youth and beauty, the myths on which the poetics of the Polish writer was based. Among all the cities that are reflected in Iwaszkiewicz’s works, Venice is the one that best expresses his conception of the crisis of European civilisation, awareness of the end of a historical period, and hope of a future palingenesis.