| dc.description.abstract | The article refers to the elementary motifs in the Polish criticism of theatre criticism, or meta-criticism, perceived as a sequence of mental forms, from institutionalisation signed by a cryptonym of a review of Xs Society until early edition of Leon Schiller.
Xs, writers originating from the social and intellectual elite, of the Polish Kingdom, preferred the genre of the column review, and according to the classicist doctrine they thought that ’’critics should deal more with actors’ play than with the analysis of the play as such”. After the historic events in the year 1830, theatre meta-critics stopped at the level of the twenties, theoretical speculations were viewed reluctantly and the thought of theatre criticism was a marginal train of thoughts beside drama-writing and literary criticism.
- The period called positivism did not revolutionise meta-critical imagination. Mieczysław Pawlikowski mentioned the interdisciplinary nature of theatre critical activities, and their specific character which is a consequence of a transient nature of a play. ’’Stage is neither a pulpit nor a rostrum, but partially it is each of these two things”. This motif from Józef Narzymski’s text had appeared several times since 1870-ties, occasionally designating a wish of criticism to influence the choice of plays, and sometimes interfering with actor’s and director’s competencies. In the 1878 brochure about the Cracow theatre criticism, Zygmunt Przybylski considered criticism as a factor unifying various links of theatre life, in the noble comprehension of utilitarianism. A peculiar manifestation of meta-critical awareness are comedies (Feliks Schober, Jan Chęciński), and also parodies in satirical magazines.
In the Young Polish thought about the criticism negative statements prevail (Edward Webersfeld, Bertold Menkes), which confirms a long lasting life of certain motifs rather than a fundamental change of imagination. “Criticism is not art, it is science”, stated Feliks Koneczny, a theatre critic and history philosopher, for whom “literary theatre criticism”, to be realised as text, and its dramatic performance analysis, was an ideal. At the tum of the 20th century Antoni Sygietyński popularised the principles of naturalism in critical studies, similarly to Gabriela Zapolska, who, however, frequently turned to impressionism. Jan Lorentowicz and Stanisław Brzozowski emphasised culture-formative and ethical aspects of writings about the theatre. Teofil Trzciński chose a different path and he saw greatest possibilities of self-definition of criticism in acting. In particular, it was Leon Schiller, who said that, “Achilles heel of theatre criticism is its insensitivity to artistic shapes that a given literary work takes on stage”. Schiller, propagator of the Great Theatre Reform, fighting with literary character and impressionism of the theatre criticism, closed Young Polish phase of the discussion and initiated its inter-war period. | en_EN |
