Ortograficzny „prymitywista”: Mańifest w sprawie ortografji fonetycznej Jasieńskiego w perspektywie antropologiczno-historycznej

Abstract

The article concerns the futuristic design of phonetic spelling by Bruno Jasieński, examined in the perspective of the anthropology of writing and cultural history. It is an attempt to answer the following questions: (1) why in the first half of the twentieth century an attack on the very visuality of letters — unveiling its non-transparency — begins to be perceived by both futurists and researchers on them as a revolt which achieves certain extreme; (2) what are the cultural origins of the belief that formal experiments on literary language are less bold and more keeping with tradition than experiments in character-shaping and spelling, and what cultural circumstances must exist so that a spelling experiment could become a tool for avant-garde attitudes which use it to constitute and emphasize their own radicalism. In order to answer this, I try to see the spelling in a historical and cultural perspective, understand it as a set of standards responsible, on one hand, for visual standardization of writing and written language, on the other hand — for social and cultural distinction based on the reference to the specific, historically variable and socially located literary competence. I also try to associate spelling with other extra-linguistic and extra-literary socio-political-cultural institutions: especially with education and a modern state as an „imagined community”.