This site was created to celebrate the 2500 anniversary of the Battle of Thermopylae together with the Hellenic Society. It presents a research project Sparta in Polish Literature and Culture – from the Old Polish Period to the 20th Century: Between the Reception of Greek Heritage and the Search for National Identity and discusses the central role of Thermopylae in the Polish reception of Sparta.
Sparta in Polish Literature & Culture: the project and the two volumes
Volume two of Sparta w kulturze polskiej [Sparta in Polish Culture] completes our presentation of the results of research conducted at the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of ‘Artes Liberales’ in the inter-university project Sparta in Polish Literature and Culture from the Old Polish Period to the 20th Century: Between the Reception of Greek Heritage and the Search for National Identity (financed with National Science Centre (NCN) funding). The project’s aim was to explore the vision of Sparta in Polish literature and culture from the earliest times – the Old Polish period – all the way to the present era....
Before the Nineteenth Century
An Interview with Alina Nowicka-Jeżowa by Przemysław Kaniecki. Before the Nineteenth Century: Shaping the Stereotype of Sparta in Old Polish Literature (summary) (Rozmowa z Aliną Nowicką-Jeżową. Przed wiekiem XIX. Kształtowanie się stereotypu Sparty w literaturze staropolskiej, in: Sparta w kulturze polskiej, vol. 2, Warszawa 2015, Wydział Artes Liberales UW, SubLupa, p. 11-28). In the conversation, Spartan themes in Old Polish literature are presented and discussed in the context of European and Polish interests in antiquity during the Renaissance and Baroque....
A Romantic Model of the Polish Reception of Thermopylae
Romanticism had exerted a huge influence on all subsequent periods of Polish culture and on the Polish national consciousness. Romantic literature was written at a time of national bondage, which made its function very special: it was charged with upholding national identity and often replacing institutions that did not exist in the enslaved society. Polish Romanticism also had a decisive influence on the reception of the topic of Thermopylae in modern Polish culture....
Thermopylae – questioning, criticism, re-assessments
In Polish culture, Thermopylae is usually associated with a positive model of war heroism. However, at times references to the famous battle were also used critically, to show that the model of heroism it embodies is simplistic, defective, or inadequate. In this part of the site, I will shortly introduce the typical realization of the Thermopylae theme in Polish war poetry, and then I will discuss several attempts to transgress it: the poem of Tadeusz Różewicz Polish Thermopylae as well as an identically entitled play of Tadeusz Miciński and its more recent interpretations....