Awangarda : niedokończony projekt

Review: Barbara Sienkiewicz, Poznawanie i nazywanie. Refleksja cywilizacyjna i epistemologiczna w polskiej poezji modernistycznej (Recognising and Naming: Reflecting on Civilisation and Epistemology in Polish Modernist Poetry), Cracow 2007. Barbara Sienkiewicz reconstructs the genealogy of contemporary Polish poetry by associating and identifying links between the remote phenomena of the Young Poland, futurism, the Cracow avant-garde, works by Różewicz, or neo-lingu(al)ism. The antinomic nature of twentieth-century lyric poetry shows in its cyclically recurring oppositions: rationalism vs. irrationalism; affirmation of the world vs. negativism; social and civilisation-related utopianism vs. catastrophism; cognitive optimism vs. pessimism; autonomy vs. involvement. However, any attempt at arranging these issues into a clear cyclic pattern implies a considerable risk. Modernity does not cease to represent itself as an aporiatic formation, one that is consolidated through oppositions or contradictions.