Open AccessThe Unfinished Text in the Thickening Description: From Genetic Criticism to Cultural Transfer Studies (The case of Zbigniew Herbert’s Winter Tale)
Author(s) -
Mateusz Antoniuk
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
textual cultures
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1933-7418
pISSN - 1559-2936
DOI - 10.14434/textual.v13i2.31600
Subject(s) - criticism , german , newspaper , phenomenon , literature , history , cultural phenomenon , linguistics , media studies , sociology , philosophy , art , epistemology , anthropology
On the threshold of the 1970s Zbigniew Herbert, an eminent Polish poet and writer, was working on a play entitled Baśń zimowa (Winter Tale), which can be described as a truly international, interlingual, and transcultural phenomenon of textual culture. Written in Polish and ultimately intended for publication in German translation, it was inspired by a short story by James Stevenson published in The New Yorker magazine. For a number of reasons, Herbert never completed the text and all that remains is the archival material (plans, rough drafts, a newspaper cutting). Using this case as a platform, I attempt to investigate the potential for cooperation between the disciplines of genetic criticism on the one hand and cultural transfer studies on the other. A discussion of the ontology of unfinished and abandoned work provides a backdrop to the major themes.