Japanese literature has been known in Poland at least since the end of the 19th century, when first translations were made of Japanese prose and poetry (although via English or other languages). I consider the first translation made directly from Japanese into Polish language a short story by Kikuchi Kan, entitled Tusz ('Ink'), published in April of 1939, in a monthly magazine "Echoes from Far East." In the same magazine we can find also many examples of stories and poetry written not by Japanese, but by Polish authors, fascinated with Japan and its culture. Works by the same authors: Maria Juszkiewiczowa, Aleksander Janowski, Antoni Kora, Leon Rygier, Remigjusz Kwiatkowski and others were published also in other newspapers and magazines, and as separate novel books. While some short mentions about the earliest translations may be found in books on Japanese literature and contacts between Poland and Japan, novels, stories and poems written originally by Polish authors inspired by Japan are now all but forgotten. Hardly any of them were published again after World War II and they are not to be found in regular libraries. In the present paper I concentrate on the forgotten jewels of Polish prose (and to some extent poetry and drama) based on Japanese themes, published before World War II.

The article directly and indirectly refers to anthropological and philosophical texts which strive to discover and present the gender factor as important in the light of the humanities. The author refers to “Literackie nie-nazywanie. Onomastykon polskiej prozy współczesnej” (Literary Not-naming. Onomasticon of the modern Polish prose) by Magdalena Graf and indicates the femininity factor as a relevant one also in onomastics.

This article analyses the disorder in functioning of will by the example of characters from a few texts of French symbolism. On the basis of experimental psychology research described in Les Maladies de la volonté of Th. Ribot, there are discussed the example of people which unfulfilled or obsessive desires point to weakening of will due to the lack or excess of impulse. So next to the characters of aboulic individuals created by T. de Wyzewa i J. de Tinan, in the texts of Villiers de L’Isle-Adam and M. Schwob we can see people pursuing at any cost the achievement of power, or the confirmation of oneself uniqueness.

In the article an attempt is made to analyze the aspects of non-dogmatic spirituality of characters in the prose works of Ukrainian postm odernists (including Yuriy Andrukhovych, Oksana Zabuzhko, Yuriy Izdryk, Natalia Sniadanko). The theoretical aspects of problem are considered in the context of analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. The following concepts play an important role in the study: religious position, father complex, conflict and some others.

Death is one of the key concepts present in the traditional image of the world. It means an end and is related to the process of wearing out and losing original properties. In folk anthropology, death is understood in terms of the transition from the earth world to the land of the dead, as the beginning of eternal existence. Death is one of the rites of passage and as such is correlated with other crucial moments of human existence, mainly with birth and marriage. Death is a common motif present in various genres of folklore. Researchers are interested in death predominantly because of its belief- and ritual-related image. The aim of the article is to analyse depictions of death in folk fablesand other kinds of prose works. Special emphasis is placed on the personifi cation of death as well as on its genesis and ontological status. The article also deals with the idea of death understood as both an event and a process, and it addresses death seen as a transcendental and unmaterialised force which determines a person’s life against his or her will.

The article focuses on the term “train situation” created by Vyacheslav Kuricin, which is considered a metaphor of the work of the contemporary Russian writer Elena Dolgopyat. The proper analysis of Dolgopyat’s works is preceded by an introduction in which the definition of magical realism and its history in Russia is briefl y presented. The attitude of the Russian literary scholars to this phenomenon is presented as well. Next, the meanings of the figure of train in the writer’s stories are discussed. It is noteworthy that the features of magical realism (specific space-time construction, polyphonic narrative, fantastic elements perceived as something natural) are realized in her texts often through the image of a train. In works in which this picture does not exist, we deal with the „train situation”, which boils down to the combination in the presented world of various aspects of reality, unlimited by matter. The heroes live between different dimensions of reality, and combining into one cohesive whole of various space-times, ways of existence, realistic and fantastic elements allows to see the term of Kuricin also as a metaphor of all magical realism.

In the last phase of Franciszek Karpiński's life as a writer (the first quarter of the 19th century), he practically gave up poetry and concentrated instead on writing memoirs. This article tries to find out to what extent his autobiographical work, especially his Historia mego wieku i ludzi, z którymi żyłem [A History of My Century and the People with Whom I Lived], is influenced by an attitude characteristic of the sentimentalism of the previous century. As this analysis shows Karpiński's narrative exhibits both a sensitivity much indebted to Rousseau's autobiographical method and skilful shifts of tone, from satire and irony to various shades of melancholy. For sentimentalist aesthetic and poetics the continual manipulation of tone is a means of alerting the reader to the world's complexity. As in the novels of Lawrence Sterne, that complexity is experienced by way of careful observation of fragments of reality, defined by the subjectivity of the observer and the truth of his emotions.