Wyznaczniki gatunkowe współczesnej polskiej ballady (1939-1969) (próba typologii)

Abstract

The essay contains the results of studies of the ballad form of the period mentioned above: three stages were distingusihed here, determined especially by the political situation in Poland. They are the period of German occupation, the period of "socislist realism” and the years of the so-called "thaw”". In order to create a more detailed picture the authoress has introduced an internal division of the problem in question within the limits of the periods distinguished. The problems mentioned in the title of the essay are forewarded by an introduktion - a glance at the history of ballads in European poetry and the similarities of the Polish ballad and the ballad genre in English and German literature of the second half of the I8th century. As the result there are four .basic genre determinants of the ballad distinguished in this essay: melicity and rhythm of the verse system, the dynamic coexistence of all literary kinds in a ballad, the position of the narrator directing the drama of the plot, and finally the sphere of mystery and strangeness. Within the German occupation period the authoress has pointed to lyrical visionary ballads (unrealistic, catastrophic, and even apocalyptic visions of the world) by K. K. Baczyński, to the fairy tale ballads of Baczyński and T. Gajcy (the world of extrasensual imagination) and the ballads bordering on epic poems (by W. Broniewski and K. I. Gałczyński). Ballad stories by W. Broniewski are an analogy here. A different position is occupied by satirical war ballads (mostly anonymous). Social realist ballads were charactertstic of their time and they were often written by poets who opposed the oppression of the regime and later joined the political opposition. It is here that we encounter the war ballad and the typical of the period laudatory and personal ballad, written in "commemoration of”, (for example general Świerczewski). A special place is occupied by light and grotesque works of Gałczyński. The last group of ballada consists of lyrical poems which were free of political and ideological content and became purely literary phenomena. They are ballads by such prominent poets as Miron Białoszewski, Tadeusz Nowak, Jan Bolesław Ożóg and Ernest Bryll.