Leśmian Internationally: Contextual Relations: A Comparative Study(31 Polish Studies – Transdisciplinary Perspectives)

This book shows the literary legacy of Bolesław Leśmian, the great Polish writer, as engaged in a dialogue with the tradition, and forged on the crossroads of literatures, and epochs. Exploring American, French and Russian contexts (Poe’s writing, Baudelaire’s oeuvre, Balmont’s texts, the symbolist style, the bylinna tradition), highlighting the correspondences between Leśmian and the romantics (Pushkin, Gogol) as well as the modernists (Jesienin, Gorodetsky) and connecting his work to Ukrainian culture through the evocation of old Slavic folklore, the book showcases Leśmian’s work as an example of interliterary and inter-cultural transfer of aesthetics, styles, genres and motifs. A crucial outcome of this research is the codifying of a contextual analysis as a method of comparative studies.

Table of Contents:
Contents I INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 10 II CONTEXT AND METHOD .............................................................. 25 PROBLEMS OF CONTEXTS AND RESEARCH METHODS IN COMPARATIVE STUDIES ......................................................................... 27 The subject of comparative studies ........................................................... 27 Typology of contexts ................................................................................... 29 Contextual analysis as a method of historical comparative studies ..... 34 Contextual comparative analysis of literary texts against the issue of historicity ................................................................................................. 39 Aims of contextual comparative analysis ................................................. 41 III CONTEXT RELATIONS: LEŚMIAN COUNTERPOSED WITH LITERARY PREDECESSORS AND CULTURAL TRADITIONS .......................................................................................... 45 I CROSS-LITERARY FILIATIONS ............................................................. 46 Literary Mediations (Poe – Baudelaire – Balmont – Leśmian) ............. 48 Poe via the symbolists: searching for sources of Leśmian’s inspirations ........................................................................................... 48 Baudelaire’s Poe .................................................................................... 51 Balmont’s Poe ....................................................................................... 57 Translative replicas (Poe – Baudelaire – Leśmian) ................................. 64 Poe’s tales in Bolesław Leśmian’s translations: sources, inspirations, replicas ............................................................................ 64 Poe versus Leśmian: outlining the problem ................................ 64 Leśmian and translators: the Genesis of Fascination with Poe ........................................................................................... 65 Poe translated by Leśmian from Baudelaire ............................... 73 Aesthetic transformations (the aesthetics of death: Poe – Baudelaire – Balmont – Leśmian) ......................................................... 86 Ways of representing death ................................................................ 86 Aestheticizing death ............................................................................ 86 De-specification and/or alegorization of death ............................... 98 Macabre aesthetics ............................................................................. 106 Macabresque aesthetics ..................................................................... 115 Stylistic and structural influences (symbolist style – the bylina tradition – the early prose work of Leśmian) ........................................ 130 The Symbolist Style of Bolesław Leśmian’s Early Work (illustrated by the case of “Baśń o Rycerzu Pańskim” [“Tale of the Lord’s Knight”]) ........................................................... 130 The lexical layer ............................................................................ 131 The structural layer ...................................................................... 134 Creative Inspirations or Influences? .......................................... 144 II THE INTERCULTURAL HOMOLOGIES .......................................... 146 The structural reminiscences (demonic female characters: Pushkin – Gogol – Leśmian) ............................................... 148 Not just folklore: on neglected intercultural homologies ............. 148 The function of female demons in Romantic literature, and their transformations in Leśmian’s works ...................................... 152 The anticipation of death: the horror of self-knowledge ........ 152 The victims and/or avengers: the hell of memory .................... 154 Initiation into the experience of time: the hell of nature ............. 157 The grotesque figure of the witch: from Pushkin to Gogol and Leśmian .................................................................................. 157 The Gogol context in Leśmian’s “The Witch” ........................... 160 Grotesque embarrassment .......................................................... 163 Grotesque reconstruction of the stereotype of femininity ........... 165 Grotesque disillusion and social roles ............................................ 170 Metaphorical and parodistic-apocryphal transformations (forms of kaliki perekhozhie: Yesenin – Gorodetsky – Leśmian) ..................... 175 Common cultural traditions? .......................................................... 175 The three poets’ kaliki as protagonist or collective subject .......... 178 Kaliki of Gorodetsky and Leśmian as parodist and individual characters ............................................................................................ 184 The protagonist on the road ............................................................. 199 Pilgrimaging kaliki-kaleki? .............................................................. 206 Homologies or filiations? .................................................................. 208 Genre and structural modifications, thematic references, lexical repetitions (Leśmian’s poetry and Ukrainian culture and folklore) ... 211 Ukrainian culture and folklore in Leśmian’s poetry? .................... 211 Generic and structural modifications ............................................. 213 Thematic references ........................................................................... 222 Lexical repetitions ............................................................................. 226 How many traditions and cultures? ................................................ 229 IV LITERARY FOLLOWERS OF LEŚMIAN’S POETIC ............. 235 FROM ALLUSION TO LITERARY STYLIZATION: LEŚMIAN’S INTERTEXT IN CONTEMPORARY POLISH POETRY ..................... 237 Leśmian: Poet with No Followers? .......................................................... 237 Parodist and pastiche stylizations ........................................................... 241 Continuations of Leśmian’s aesthetics of death ..................................... 247 Continuations of Leśmian’s erotics ......................................................... 252 IMITATORS? FOLLOWERS? SUCCESSORS? ....................................... 255 V CONCLUSION ......................................................................................... 257 BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE ........................................................................... 277 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................ 281 INDEX ................................................................................................................. 331

About the Author :
Żaneta Nalewajk is a literature historian, comparativist and editor. She works at the Faculty of Polish Philology at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Her texts have been translated into English, Ukrainian, Russian, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovenian, Hungarian and Serbian. She has received several academic and editorial awards, both in Poland and abroad.