Voices of Polish Literature: Sound and Performance in the 20th Century

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel is focused on voices and sounds of the 20th-century Polish literature. It shows how the prosody of literary texts, poets' own reading and singing styles, as well as new recording technologies interacted with textual politics, classifications of texts, or ideas of authorship and subjectivity. Analyses of voice in this panel combine different perspectives, coming from music, literary studies, and philosophy. The first paper examines how the sound effects were used as a political commentary in the sung poetry of Jan Krzysztof Kelus. The second paper shows how the new type of verse introduced to Polish poetry after the war by Tadeusz Rozewicz was accompanied by an equally radical rethinking of appropriate recitation and reading styles. The last paper discusses the moments when Witkacy's interwar writings undermine meaning, turn to senseless sounds, and allow "the voice and nothing more" to emerge.

Sub Unit

• Literature: Central and Southeast Europe

Chair

• Joanna Nizynska, Indiana U Bloomington

Papers

• The Provisional Sung Poetry of Jan Krzysztof Kelus - Andrea F. Bohlman, UNC at Chapel Hill

• Against Poetry, Against Recitation: Listening to Tadeusz Rozewicz - Aleksandra Kremer, Harvard U

• Between Logothesis and 'Maniography:' A Reading of the Voice in Witkacy - Dag Alexander Lindskog, U of Illinois at Chicago

Discussants

• George Z Gasyna, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Lukasz Wodzynski, U of Toronto (Canada)