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DOI 10.12887/32-2019-2-126-11



Jerzy WIŚNIEWSKI – Poets Speak on Listening to Music: Three Selected Readings


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Jerzy WIŚNIEWSKI – Poets Speak on Listening to Music: Three Selected Readings

DOI 10.12887/32-2019-2-126-11

 

The article comprises the author’s interpretations of selected poetical works of Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński, Miron Białoszewski, and Stanisław Barańczak. Their poems describe three distinct sceneries in which one can listen to recorded music. The author analyzes the essence of the reception of mediated music by reconstructing the process of listening and establishing the categories of the ‘listened,’ the ‘listener,’ the ‘listening situation,’ as well as those of the purpose and of the consequences of the acts of listening in question. Then the individual style of listening characteristic of each of the three poets is discussed.

The selected works by Gałczyński (“Song V”), Białoszewski (“The Morn of Checking and Forgetting and Astonishment,” “To Offer Wings,” and “Bach—The Organ”), and Barańczak (“The Counterpoint”) show, respectively, the poets’ reception of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. In the case of “Song V” by Gałczyński, Bach’s music, listened to from records, assumes the shape of a peculiar home liturgy and is a source of joyful elation. To the lyrical ‘I’ of Białoszewski’s poetry, Bach’s music becomes a catalyst for inspiration and, as such, engenders a mystical experience. The focus with which the lyrical ‘I’ of Białoszewski’s poems reaches the deepest core of Bach’s music enables grasping the nuances inherent in the metallic sound of the harpsichord and of the organ, and discovering the two kinds of aesthetic experience this music inspires. The protagonist of the poem by Barańczak, in turn, listens to Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” while driving a car: the polyphonic structure of this work makes him discover the universal design of things, also of his own existence; he follows the elaborate complexity of the sound and the various harmonies inherent in it, allowing them to affect both his emotions and his intellect.

The styles of listening to Bach’s recorded music reflect the practices of its reception employed by Gałczyński, Białoszewski, and Barańczak. Each of them describes his own individual style of listening to this music and conveys this ‘practice’ by means of a specific image, simultaneously expressing an experience he considers as significant. Reference to the experience of the reception of music, universal to music lovers and constituting as if a specific code, is for each of the poets a way to reach out to his readers.

 

Translated by Dorota Chabrajska

 

Keywords: 20th century Polish poetry, Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński, Miron Białoszewski, Stanisław Barańczak, musicality of literature, listening, Johann Sebastian Bach’s music

           

Contact: Zakład Literatury i Tradycji Romantyzmu, Instytut Filologii Polskiej i Logopedii, Wydział Filologiczny, Uniwersytet Łódzki, ul. Pomorska 171/173, 90-236 Łódź, Poland
E-mail: jerzy.wisniewski@uni.lodz.pl; jurwis@t-system.com.pl
http://polonistyka.uni.lodz.pl/wisniewski-jerzy/#tab-id-1



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  1. ISSN 0860-8024
  2. e-ISSN 2720-5355
  3. The Republic of Poland Ministry of Science and Higher Education Value: 100.00
  4. Quarterly “Ethos” is indexed by the following databases: EBSCO, CEEOL, Index Copernicus (ICV 2017: 55.26), Philosopher’s Index, ERIH Plus.
  5. DOI Prefix 10.12887