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The article reconstructs the fate of the F24 formula, usually understood as the title of the Almanach Nowej Sztuki (Almanac of New Art) from 1924 and usually developed as “Futurism 1924.” However, this interpretation is challenged by the fact that the “F.24” formula also appears in the title of the lost manifestos of Jerzy Jankowski, created no later than 1919, recorded in “Tram wpopszek ulicy” (Tram Crosswise the Street). The article presents the results of research on the earliest stage of Polish Futurism, based on archival materials and including the discovered memoirs of Jankowski’s sister, Janina Jankowska-Orynżyna, which shed new light on the nature of the lost manifestos and the “proclamations” delivered by Jankowski at the Futurist club. In light of the latter, F24 can be read differently than before, as a surprising and exceptionally capacious formula of (Polish) Futurism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article is an attempt at interpreting the experimental verse of two Warsaw Futurists, Aleksander Wat's namopaniki and Anatol Stern's romans Peru [A romance of Peru]. A series of analyses, conducted from the perspective of the materiality of language, indicates that the key to the generic status of Wat's verse is to be sought in the concept of metamorphism. Indeed, his namopaniki are best described as metamorphic poems in which the dynamic of transformation gets the better of both their linguistic material and their presumptive subjects. By associating the linguistic experiments of the two Warsaw Futurists, who came from Jewish families, with the situation of 'being a stranger to one's language' (Deleuze and Guattari) and Jacques Derrida's chafing at monolingualism, the article argues that Wat's and Stern's early poetic practice represents a turn to 'minority art', i.e. a form of discourse subversive of the dominant hierarchies of the 'majority' language and literature. Furthermore, the Deleuzian concept of minor literature (littérature mineure) may be used to seek a finer differentiation between the Warsaw Futurist avant-garde and the East or West European models of Futurism and Dadaism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is an attempt to interpret the only book published by Jerzy Jankowski, a forerunner of Polish futurism who is often overlooked in literary history related to the beginnings of the avant-garde movement. Tram wpopszek ulicy (Tram crossways on the street), published in 1920, is presented in terms of innovative phenomena in Polish and European poetry. Such a point of view reveals its precursory character, despite its passeism repeatedly diagnosed by critics. The key word and the starting point of the analysis is the first word of the title - tram, whose ambiguity makes it not only a sign of a modern city but also a metaphor of the construction of the entire book and its historical location. Further analysis leads to conclusions that, on the one hand, reveal the complicated meaning of the vitalistic futurist concept of life and, on the other, indicate aporias and tensions between symbolism and avant-garde, originality and repetition, materiality and spirituality, as well as aesthetics and the social function of art. These seem to be a hidden dimension of Jankowski's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is an attempt at analysing the phenomenon of Dziennik bez samogłosek (Diary without Vowels) from the perspective of the text's materiality. The subject was undertaken as a result of the diary's Michalina Kmiecik's new edition which for the first time allows to insight into Wat's original typescript and into its new reading unmediated by Ola Watowa's interventions. The reflection's starting point is a confrontation of the various interpretations and scholarly remarks on the form of Diary without Vowels, all being both possibly different answers to settle the problem of specificity of Wat's use of the code and to expound the reasons the poet makes such a choice. The analysis of the form ultimately prompts to resolve the issue on the level of Wat's constant confrontation with the avant-garde. From this perspective the code is seen rather as a peculiar experiment in which lexical material remains in direct connection with (avant-garde in its nature) mistrust to language, an effort to defragment language and passion for destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article traces historical discourses of the avant-garde from the perspective of models of gender roles, starting with the analysis of the most radical Futurist ideas of the role of women. The crucial point is the interpretation of the slogan “scorn for women” and its connection with the critical judgement of bourgeois representations of the world. The main point of the last part of the article is an approach to the first poem by Aleksander Wat, the interpretation of which seems to show wasted avant-garde capability for considering the idea of gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Baron-Milian reads the phenomenon of Aleksaner Wat's Notatniki [Notebooks] through a variety of lenses, including the theory of the archive, textual genetics and somatic criticism. Key considerations touch on the particular epistemology of writing and the interdisciplinary project of accumulating and organizing knowledge that emerge from the writer's notes, blurring the boundaries between what is scientific and social, aesthetic and political. These practices are essential for the emergence of a subjective knowledge that is articulated in a variety of ways and finds its particular place in literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sketch is an attempt at analysing the different meanings in which the economical concept of exchange is revealed in Aleksander Wat's creativity. The author of Buchalteria (Bookkeeping) not only enters into the antique tradition of conceiving of thinking, language, and literature in the categories of exchange, but also many times at various stages of his creativity builds theoretical models of literature and literary language based on the category of exchange. The sketch's starting point is the definition of "economy of literature" proposed by Michał Paweł Markowski and its close connection with the concept of realism as well as Markowski's pointing at one of the most fundamental feature of "critical modernity literature" in which literary language is seen as "inexchangeable speech." Yet, interpretation of Aleksander Wat's texts shows a slightly different mode of describing modern literature in the categories of exchange in which language idiomaticity lies precisely in infinite possibility of substitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]