Academic literature on the topic 'Jacek Kaczmarski'

In the article the linguistic image of the terms “homeland”, “nation” and “freedom” in Jacek Kaczmarski’s songs has been analysed. The image of these values in the poet’s texts reflects his attitude to the communist homeland, as well as to the country, which has changed as a result of democratic transformations. The disappointment with the home country, nation living there and questionable freedom are expressed in Jacek Kaczmarski’ engaged poetry through characteristic words or expressions. The analysis of the linguistic image of the world consists in capturing lexemes and phrases being an interpretation of an average language user. This a tool for cognitive linguistics research. It has helped to demonstrate the poet’s negative opinion about the homeland, nation and freedom. The image of these values left by Jacek Kaczmarski dispels the myth of “the bard of Solidarity” which accompanied the poet from the beginning of his career. Captivity is shown by means of lexemes connected with dog’s life: kennel, chain, belonging to a certain group of people (we) in which the uniqueness of an entity disappears, as well as the fact that freedom needs guards. The homeland described by the poet is red, that is communist. According to the lyrical subject appearing in Jacek Kaczmarski’s songs, Poland is an illegitimate child of Versailles or gentry’s private patrimony. As regards nation, it has been divided for centuries as can be seen from the division of Polish people by axis they-we which was used by the poet. The soldier of Armia Krajowa [the Home Army] is not able to trust the representative of Armia Ludowa [the People’s Army] in spite of the fact that they have the same enemy. Jacek Kaczmarski also presents the megalomania of Sarmatians who describe other nations with pejorative and stereotypical expressions. The linguistic image of the world as a set of subjective judgements about the world is a linguistic interpretation of understanding words or sentences by an average language user. Studying the image of the world created by poets is useful in an analysis of social concerns of a given epoch, as well as in the interpretation of individual linguistic signs, which is necessary in cognitive research into language.

The article discusses the issues of inheritance and transmission of cultural information. The exemplification material is provided by the texts of the 20th century Polish bard Jacek Kaczmarski. The lyrics of his songs, on the one hand, transmit and preserve the units of collective memory of Polish society gathering the experience of centuries of history; on the other hand, they themselves become a source of newly emerging ideas. In both cases, it is possible to distinguish in Kaczmarski’s songs textual units that refer to well-known topics of Polish public discourse (historical and contemporary) and transform them not only in terms of original poetic realisations and author’s interpretations, but also modify them by setting in a new cultural context, respectively through textual repetitions, mutations and modifications of the components of the collective myth.

Successful nonviolent protests are the celebrated theaters of musical politics; the same is true for the month of protests that brought about the legalization of the Solidarity Union, the first independent trade union in the Eastern bloc. This chapter takes the reader into the important role that sound media played both in coordinating efforts on the ground and in narrating the August 1980 strikes’ power to a broader public in Poland and abroad. Written and recorded accounts of the protest scenes show sound’s coordinating power and music’s entertainment value for this occupational strike. The charismatic workers’ representative Lech Wałęsa sang at the negotiating table, bringing music to the political stage. The chapter also critiques romantic notions of music and protest to dwell on questions of authorship and agency by tracing the rise of the opposition’s protest anthem, “Walls” (1978), by singer-songwriter Jacek Kaczmarski.

The subject of the article is the issue of senility present in the artistic output of Jacek Kaczmarski from its beginning (“Old People in the Bus” from his debut programme “Walls”) to its end (“The Old Age of Theseus”, from the volume “The Tunnel”, which became an inspiration for taking up this topic). Consequently, I discuss the poems in which the communication perspective can be observed with regard to the subject experiencing the old age (“The Old Age of Ovid”, the above mentioned “The Old Age of Theseus”, “Old Michelangelo and Pieta Rondanini”, “The Sleeping Old Poet” and other poems), including the texts, in which the old age or an old man are the subjects of reflections (for instance “The Old Age of Piotr Wysocki”). The chosen topic is supplemented with a consideration of the figure of returning and transformation the innocence to experience — this is where the actual and indispensable comparison of the old age and youth is going to participate.