Przyboś’ Spring in Chicago. On Tymoteusz Karpowicz Promoting the Polish Avant-garde

Abstract

The text refers to the International Conference on Przyboś organised on April 8–9, 1992, at University of Illinois at Chicago, but the main character of the article is Tymoteusz Karpowicz, spiritus movens of that undertaking, the poet, dramatist and professor at UIC. The authoress of the text describes his attempts to popularise the Polish avant-garde tradition among American Polonia. She also tries to investigate the relationship between Karpowicz’s scientific and popular science activity and his aesthetic preferences, proposed poetry model or attitude to other poets (such as Cyprian Kamil Norwid, Bolesław Leśmian, Julian Przyboś or Czesław Miłosz). The article is a reflection on Karpowicz’s aesthetic and ethical requirements to art: his passion for unimitative literature models and the conviction that poetry is broader than words, that creativity and life are inseparable.