Dictionary of Literary Influences

J

JAMES, CYRIL LIONEL ROBERT (1901–1989)

C.L.R. James was born in Trinidad into a middle-class family. Several years after he completed his education, James taught at his alma mater, Queen’s Royal College. In 1932, at the age of 31, James left Trinidad and moved to England with hopes of becoming a novelist. There, James worked as a cricket reporter for the Manchester Guardian. In 1933, he became involved in the Trotsky revolutionary movement. James felt that Trotskyism could be used to aid Africans and people of African descent in their struggle for equality and, in some cases, independence. This interest was at the core of his involvement with the 1930s African Independent Movement. However, at the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, he became disillusioned with the Trotsky movement and eventually broke from it (Grimshaw 1996, 6–7). In 1936, James wrote, produced, and acted in a play, Toussaint L’Ouverture, choosing Paul Robeson to play the lead role. Two years later, the activist moved to the United States. While there, he traveled in literary circles, forming relationships with figures such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Carl Van Vechten. He married Constance Webb and the couple had a son, but the marriage was not successful. During the McCarthy era, James was imprisoned on Ellis Island for his left-wing political affiliations. Consequently he was deported from the United States in 1953. James traveled throughout Europe and Africa until he returned to Trinidad in 1958 and he joined the People’s National Movement drive for Trinidadian independence. In 1968, he returned to the United States, where he lectured at universities and continued to write. James eventually settled in Brixton, London, where he died.

James’s work reflects his interest in the ordinary person, the working class or proletariat. Before he became involved in Trotskyism, he wrote a biography on Andre Cipriani, The Life of Captain Cipriani: An Account of British Government in the West Indies (1932). In an interview, James said he was interested in Cipriani because of the Trinidadian labor leader’s ideas about self-government and his concern with

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the “barefooted man” (Farred 1996, 118). By the time James published this biography, he had written a novel, Minty Allen in 1929 (although it was not published until 1936) and short stories, including “Triumph,” which were, according to James, about “ordinary people” (Farred 1996, 119). When he began to study Trotskyism, he was particularly interested in Leon Trotsky’s three-volume History of the Russian Revolution. He also studied Karl Marx, G.W.F Hegel, V. I. Lenin, and Josef Stalin (Farred 1996, 105). James read a variety of authors including the works of Pan-Africanist W.E.B. DuBois and Universal Negro Improvement Association leader Marcus Garvey. Further, he so admired Herman Melville’s Moby Dick that he wrote about it in a book entitled Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (1953). According to James, he was intrigued by Melville’s “instinctive revolutionary development” and his ability to make the crew of ordinary people distinctive (Farred 1996, 41). These ideas are at the heart of Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938). James was also fond of Aeschylus and Shakespeare, whom he credits as being artists who used new methods of expression.

Archives

C. L. R. James Institute, New York City.

Printed Sources

Buhle, Paul. C.L.R. James: The Artist as Revolutionary (London: Verso, 1988). Farred, Grant (ed.). Rethinking C.L.R. James (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996).

Grimshaw, Anna (ed.). Special Delivery: The Letters of C.L.R. James to Constance Webb, 1939–1948 (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996).

Nielsen, Aldon Lynn. C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction ( Jackson University Press of Mississippi, 1997).

Worcester, Kent. C.L.R. James: A Political Biography (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).

Tara D. Green

JANION, MARIA (1926– )

Maria Janion, a scholar in the history of Polish literature, a historian of ideas, and a feminist, spent her childhood and World War II in Vilnius (at that time in Poland). She studied Polish literature at the Lódz and Warsaw Universities (1945–49). From 1948 she worked in the Institute of Literary Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN), writing extensively on the history of ideas, Polish romanticism, Polish literature and feminist thought. From 1979 she also worked at the Gdansk University where her pioneering views on women’s identity in general and in Poland in particular resulted in seven volumes entitled “Transgressions” (1981–88), a collective piece written under Janion’s direction by young writers from the “New Privacy” generation. The central concept of crossing various cultural borders and prohibitions becomes synonymous with individual freedom. The works focus on usually marginalized aspects of humanity such as loneliness, cruelty, madness, or eroticism and on the condition of a genius, an artist, a child, a rebel, and a woman. These volumes became one of the earliest publications on feminism in post–Communist Poland. Janion’s work influenced a younger

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generation of writers, including Krystyna Lars and Izabella Fillipiak, who shared Janion’s assumption that transgressing various types of social and cultural norms leads to freedom.

Janion’s unique erudition makes it difficult to pinpoint the major influences on her, although she was influenced by the works of Adam Mickiewicz, the greatest Polish romantic poet, by German romantic fantastic literature, and perhaps by French surrealism. Janion has rarely talked or written about herself, though in her most personal book, Zyjac tracimy zycie (We Lose Life While Living It; 2001), she discusses her fascination with Honore de Balzac’s novel, The Magic Skin (1831) and his concept of continuous ending of human life.

Janion’s greatest accomplishments lie in two areas of research: her work on Polish romanticism and her innovative work on feminist thought. Her extensive research on Polish romanticism examines the strengths of romanticism in Polish literature, including the postwar literature (1945–90) and its importance in understanding cultural constructs of Polish national identity. Janion often worked with Maria Zmigrodzka, also a scholar of Polish romanticism, who was likely the major inf luence on Janion’s philosophy. Janion’s monographs—Lucjan Siemienski, poeta romantyczny (Lucjan Siemienski, the Romantic Poet; 1955); Zygmunt Krasinski, Debiut i dojrzalosc (Zygmunt Krasinski: The Debut and the Maturity; 1962)—as well as her works analyzing the major themes of romantic thought are devoted to the mythology of patriotism, the cultural construct of tragedy, the concept of romantic individualism, irrationalism, and demonism. These include

Romantyzm: Studia i ideach i stylu (Romanticism: Studies about Ideals and Style; 1969); Goraczka romantyczna (The Romantic Fever; 1975); Czas formy otwartej: Tematy i media romantyczne (The Time of the Open Form: Romantic Themes and Mediums; 1984); and Romantyzm i historia (Romanticism and History), co-authored with Maria Zmigrodzka (1978).

Janion’s latest writings prove the exhaustion of the romantic myths in Polish post-communist society and its inability to create a different model for the experiences of the twentieth century. These works include Wobec zla (Facing Evil; 1989);

Zycie posmiertne Konrada Wallenroda (The Afterlife of Konrad Wallenrod; 1990); and Projekt krytyki fantazmatycznej: Szkice o egzystancjach ludzi i duchow (The Project of Phatasmatic Criticism: Sketches on the Existence of People and Spirits; 1991). Janion’s views on history bear some influence of the historians of the so-called Warsaw school of the history of ideas, especially those of Bronislaw Baczko and Leszek Kolakowski.

Archives

None available.

Printed Sources

Hawkesworth, C. (ed.). A History of Central European Women’s Writing (New York: Palgrave, in association with School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College, London, 2001).

Janion, Maria. Zyjac tracimy zycie (Warsaw: Wydawn, W.A.B., 2001).

Walczewska, S. Damy, rycerze i feministki: kobiecy dyskurs emancypacyjny w Polsce (Krakow: Wydawn EFKA, 1999).

Katarzyna Zechenter

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JIMÉNEZ, JUAN RAMÓN (1881–1958)

Juan Ramón Jiménez was called an “essential poet.” He expressed his conviction that beauty and poetry are real entities rather than simply a belief in beautiful objects or poetic verses. For Jiménez, there existed the harmony of both the aesthetic qualities of reality and the aesthetic sensibilities of the poet, in a sense responding to Charles Baudelaire’s pure poetry distinction between ethics and aesthetics. From the sentimental subjectivism of his early years, his poetry evolved to objectivity and finally toward a philosophical, metaphysical poetry. His poetry was elitist and introspective and is largely free of literary trends and fashion.

Jiménez was born in Moguer, in the south of Spain. He studied law in Seville, where he initiated his poetic writings and read the Spanish romantic poets of the nineteenth century: Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, José de Espronceda, Rosalía de Castro; the mystics, such as Saint John of the Cross; and medieval Arabic-Andalusian poetry.

At 20, Jiménez left for Madrid. After having met the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, he spoke of “destino,” a crucial episode in his career that introduced him to modernism. During these years, Jiménez enjoyed reading and also declaiming poetry of Alphonse Lamartine, Lord Byron, Heinrich Heine, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and Parnassianism. In an autobiographical note published in Renacimiento, Jiménez spoke of his heritage: “My blood circulated in romance (ballads), I could hear it. That was a folk song, cultured because of the unconsciously reflected model of Heine, of Bécquer and of Musset, whose Intermezzo and whose Nights I was then reading. Musset gave it seriousness and Heine the second accent” ( Jiménez 270). Jiménez admired symbolist poet Paul Verlaine, “the most estrange and sweet soul that has been on Earth.” He published his first modernist books of poems Ninfeas (1900) and Almas de Violeta (1900) that were filled with the musicality and beauty of language. Years later, irritated by the preciosity of this writing, Jiménez tried to destroy all the volumes he could lay his hands on.

His father’s sudden death resulted in Jiménez suffering several nervous breakdowns. During his convalescence, he read the aphoristic prose of Friedrich Nietzsche and the poetry of William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. After returning to Madrid in 1911, Jiménez was already an acclaimed poet. He moved to the Residencia de Estudiantes, the famous college frequented by prominent artistic and intellectual figures such as Miguel de Unamuno, José Ortega y Gasset, and later Federico García Lorca, Luis Bunuel, and Salvador Dali, as well as John Maynard Keynes, Albert Einstein, and Paul Valéry.

In 1913, while at the Residencia de Estudiantes, Jiménez met a young student, Zenobia Camprubí, the American educated daughter of a wealthy Spaniard. Their stormy courtship is reflected in two books of poetry: Estío (1914, published 1915) and Sonetos espirituales (1914–15, published 1917) based on the sonnet tradition of Shakespeare and Garcilaso de la Vega.

Returning to Spain from a honeymoon in the United States, he led a secluded and solitary life writing poetry. He worked persistently on poetry, prose, reviews, prefaces, and introductions and kept informed of literary movements in Spain and Spanish America and the world. He was director of several poetic journals that attracted the most important poets at the time, including Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén, and Rafael Alberti, among others. Platero y yo, a pseudo-autobiographical masterpiece of literary prose, was published in 1914.

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At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the couple left for the United States, where Jiménez was cultural attaché until 1939. They traveled in Latin America, and he later taught at several U.S. universities. In 1950, he established himself in Puerto Rico where Zenobia died in 1956, a few days after her husband received the Nobel Prize for literature. Jiménez died two years later in 1958.

The literary work of Jiménez can be divided into three stages. Before 1916, his poetry followed the modernist trend. His Arias tristes (1903) and Jardines Lejanos (1904) were influenced by musicians such as Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. From 1907, his longtime friend Luisa Grimm de Muriedas introduced him to the poetry of William Butler Yeats, Francis Thompson, and Lord Byron.

After this stage, his poetry became independent of any school. Filled with symbolism in search of absolute beauty, it is the period of Poesía pura (naked poetry). It is a dehumanized and intellectual poetry that simplifies the vocabulary and any unnecessary complexity in a ceaseless meditation on love, poetry, and death. In 1917 he published Diario de un poeta recién casado and Estación total (written between 1923 and 1936).

Zenobia had a great influence in his life, collaborating in translating many authors into Spanish, including Rabindranath Tagore’s The Crescent Moon. In the United States, Jiménez read the works of Robert Frost and Ezra Pound and, later, Emily Dickinson. He also established contact with prestigious American intellectual institutions. The Hispanic Society of America published an anthology,

Poesías escogidas: 1899–1917.

After 1949, he concentrated on more spiritual writing; some critics have talked of “neomisticismo” (neomysticism) parallel to Saint John of the Cross. In Tiempo y muerte Jiménez stated that God is in each one of us and is what joins us to another. His latest works were complex and filled with emotions, especially Romances de Coral Gables (139–42, published 1948) and Animal de fondo (1949).

Jiménez was the teacher of the so-called “Generation of 1927” poets (including García Lorca and Rafael Alberti, among others). He had a great influence on Spanish poetry by opening new poetic expressions and horizons for Hispanic writers. For his originality and independence, Jiménez has always been at the forefront of twentieth-century Spanish poetry.

Archives

Fundación Juan Ramón Jiménez, centro de estudios Juan Roamonianos, Moguer, Huelva, Spain.

Casa-Museo, Moguer, Huelva, Spain.

“Sala Zenobia y Juan Ramón Jiménez” in the Biblioteca General, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras.

Archivo Histórico Nacional, Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.

Printed Sources

Albornoz, Aurora de. Juan Ramón Jiménez (Madrid: Taurus, 1983). Fogelquist, Donald F. Juan Ramón Jiménez (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976). Garfias, Francisco. Juan Ramón Jiménez (Madrid: Taurus 1958).

Jiménez, Juan Ramón. Por el cristal amarillo. Francisco Garfias (ed.), (Madrid: Aguilar, 1961). Juliá, Mercedes. El universo de Juan Ramón (Madrid: Gredos 1989).

Palau de Nemes, Graciela. Vida y obra de Juan Ramón Jiménez: La poesía desnuda, 2 vols. (Madrid: Gredos, 1975).

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Wilcox, John C. Self and Image in Juan Ramón Jiménez (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

Young, Howard. The Line in the Margin: Juan Ramón Jiménez and His Readings on Blake, Shelley, and Yeats (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980).

Andrés Villagrá

JOHN XXIII (1881–1963)

Pope John XXIII was born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli in the village of Sotte il Monte, Italy, the third of thirteen children and the first son of Giovanni and Marianna Roncalli. He was educated in Bergamo and at the Apollinare seminary in Rome, receiving his doctorate in theology and ordination as a priest in 1904. From 1904 to 1914 he was secretary to the bishop of Bergamo. Following national service in World War I, Roncalli’s career in the church progressed steadily but uneventfully. His appointments as archbishop in 1925 and then as the Vatican’s diplomatic representative (nuncio) to Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, and France broadened his perceptions as well as his horizons. During the dangerous years before and during the Second World War, Roncalli was able to use his official (and geographical) positions in combination with his natural charm to secure safe passage for thousands of Jews away from the onslaught of the Third Reich. In 1953 he was named cardinal and patriarch of Venice. In the autumn of 1958, as he approached the age of 77, this son of tenant farmers was elected pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Roncalli took John as his papal name, in honor of his father and of John the Baptist, who was patron saint of his home village; the name choice also countered and cancelled the anti-pope John XXIII of the fifteenth century. As Pope John XXIII, Roncalli continued to mix politics with religion via morality and ethics, noting significantly that “justice comes before charity” (Cahill 2002, 169). He cultivated relationships with Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, Islamic, Protestant, and Shinto leaders. He was consultant and confidant to both U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev; indeed, they were dubbed “The Triumvirate.” And he was the instigator and driving force behind the Second Vatican Council (“Vatican II,” 1962–65) and its reforming advocacy of integration and ecumenicalism, for which Time magazine named him the Man of the Year for 1962. Both before and after his assumption of the pontificate, Roncalli’s personality transcended religion, race, and culture.

As might be expected, the future pope’s early literary experiences circled around the Bible. Roncalli’s father showed his young son the carved and glassed depictions of biblical tales in the local church. The poetry of the mass and the rosary was a daily event. In the evenings of his childhood, Roncalli’s Uncle Zaviero would regale the Roncalli children with vivid readings of Bible stories. Zaviero Roncalli, a prolific reader, was also a member of the socialist group Catholic Action and mixed readings from the socialist newspapers with the biblical recitations. For Angelo Roncalli, ever afterward, religion and socialism would not be conf licting ideologies; the church and the well-being of ordinary people were inexorably tied. His formal study of the Bible, and subsequently of the Christian fathers and of the Greek and Roman classics, began when he was seven and sent to learn Latin from a local priest. Roncalli’s subsequent acceptance to seminary took him to the nearby city of Bergamo—“the most Catholic of cities,” according to L’Osservatorre Romano (Elliott 1973, 21)—known for its arts and its

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agitations for social reform. Bergamo was also the setting of Alessandro Manzoni’s hugely popular historical epic The Betrothed (1826). Considered Italy’s first modern novel, The Betrothed (I promessi sposi) was approvingly described by one reviewer as “Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray rolled into one” (Hebblethwaite 1985, 19). A compassionate and deeply Catholic novelist and poet, Manzoni wrote about the conf lict between formal, devotional Catholicism and popular expressions of faith, bringing them into harmony. Roncalli first read The Betrothed as a young seminarian and, throughout his life, would frequently recommend it as valuable reading, especially the last chapter, for priests in conf lict. Manzoni’s poetry held equal appeal, particularly La Pentacoste, when Pope John began envisioning a new Vatican Council.

Roncalli had been well familiar with Dante, Petrarch, and Tasso as well as St. Augustine and Manzoni since his teenage years and continued reading and referencing them. His later literary interests also included Charles Péguy, the twenti- eth-century poet and proponent of Catholic socialism, and Nicolas Gogol, especially the Spiritual Letters. He was also a regular reader of newspapers but, for the most part, Roncalli preferred reading varied and various histories and biblical commentaries. He was, after all and for most of his life, a publishing historian as well as churchman; and he combined the two when he opened Vatican II by saying “History is the teacher of life” (Trevor 1967, 100). In seminary Roncalli’s readings in church history gave him a base from which to evaluate modern concerns. He was a classical linguist, mastering Greek and Hebrew along with Latin (and then there were the Romance and Slavonic languages which he also acquired). Cicero and Juvenal were perpetually favored authors, with Cicero’s humane good sense having a natural appeal to Roncalli. In what became his Journal of a Soul, the young seminarian Roncalli writes of having “a restless longing to know everything, to study all the great authors . . . ,” which disingenuously implied also those authors on the [Catholic] Index of Forbidden Books (Cahill 2002, 87). Years on an interviewer described the bookshelves of Roncalli’s quarters in Sofia, Bulgaria, as being stocked with works by the Greek fathers, Petrarch, Dante, and Manzoni. And, as a denizen of Paris’s book shops, the portly papal nuncio to France was seen scrambling around on the floor of a bookstore, hunting for a work by John Henry Newman but retrieving just as happily a translation of Dom Guéranger. For the pope as well as for the young seminarian, the value of great writers and the importance of good writing was perpetual. In a mild chastisement to newspaper reporters regarding the content of their reporting on Vatican II, Pope John offered for contemplation the words of Alessandro Manzoni: “Truth is holy and I have never betrayed it” (Elliott 1973, 273; Hatch 1963, 190).

Archives

Acta Apostolicae Sedis. The official collection of papal and curial documents, Vatican Library, Rome.

Printed Sources

Aimé-Azam, Denise. L’Extraordinaire Ambassadeur (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1967). First-hand anecdotal account of Roncalli’s Parisian mission.

Cahill, Thomas. Pope John XXIII (New York: Viking, 2002).

Capovilla, Loris. Giovanni XXIII, Quindici Letture (Rome: Storia e Lettertura, 1970). Primary sources and unpublished material.

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———. Ite Missa Est (Padua: Messegero, and Bergamo: Grafica e Arte, 1983). Documentation of Roncalli’s childhood and youth and of significant episodes during the pontificate.

Cugini, Davide. Papa Giovanni nei suoi primi passi a Sotto il Monte (Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, 1965). Reminiscences by a friend about Roncalli’s childhood and youth.

Elliott, Lawrence. I Will Be Called John: A Biography of Pope John XXIII (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1973).

Hatch, Alden. A Man Named John (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1963).

Hebblethwaite, Peter. Pope John XXIII: Shepherd of the Modern World (New York: Doubleday, 1985).

Lercaro, Giacomo. “Suggestions for Historical Research.” In Giacomo Lercaro and Gabriele De Rosa (authors), Dorothy White (trans.), John XXIII, Simpleton or Saint? (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1967).

Pepper, Curtis Bill. An Artist and the Pope (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1968). Based on personal recollections of the sculptor Giacomo Manzu.

Roncalli, Angelo Giuseppe (Pope John XXIII). Giovanni XXIII, il Pastore, Giambattista Busetti (ed.), (Padua: Messegero, 1980). Roncalli’s letters from 1911 to 1963 to his diocesan congregation, the Priests of the Sacred Heart.

———.Journal of a Soul, Loris Francesco Capovilla (ed.), Dorothy White (trans.), (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1980; Italian original: Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1967). Roncalli’s spiritual diary, begun when he was 14 years old.

———.Letters to his Family, 1901–1962, Loris Francesco Capovilla (ed.), Dorothy White (trans.), (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1970; Italian original: Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1968.)

———.The Teachings of Pope John XXIII, Michael Chinigo (ed.), Arthur A. Coppotelli (trans.), (London: George G. Harrap, 1967).

Trevor, Meriol. Pope John (London: Macmillan, 1967).

E. D. Lloyd-Kimbrel

JOHN PAUL II (1920– )

Karol Wojtyl⁄ a was born in Wadowice, southern Poland. In his youth, he wrote his first poetic works and, as an amateur actor, he performed in local theaters. After 1938, he studied Polish philology and later theology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. During the war, in 1941, he helped create and acted in the clandestine Rhapsodic Theater of Mieczysl⁄ aw Kotlarczyk. In 1942, Wojtyl⁄ a decided to enter the priesthood by enrolling in an underground theological seminary in Krakow. After being ordained a priest in 1946, he studied at Angelicum University in Rome, where, in 1948, he received a doctorate in theology (his dissertation was titled: The Doctrine of Faith in St. John of the Cross). Afterward he taught at various theological seminaries, and in 1954 he became a professor of philosophy and ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. In 1958, he was consecrated a bishop of Krakow. In 1963, he became an archbishop and in 1967 he was made a cardinal. Wojtyl⁄ a participated in the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). On October 16, 1978, he was elected as pope and thus became the first non-Italian bishop of Rome since 1522. His new position as head of the Roman Catholic Church revolutionized the church and renovated the papacy. While closely guarding all the traditional values and moral imperatives of the Roman Catholic Church (something that warranted his critics to accuse him of conservatism), he managed to implement a new church policy representing its openness to the problems of the modern world. He is credited for the full implementation of the directives of Vatican II, the redefini-

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tion of inter-religious dialogue (especially concerning Judaism), the introduction of ecumenism into Catholicism, and the elucidation of the moral challenges facing contemporary society. He is also commended for his contribution to dismantling communism and promoting world peace. Being a religious leader who goes with his teachings to people by traveling to numerous countries throughout the world, John Paul II is an unconventional and charismatic pope. He has provided personal inspiration that has affected the lives of both Christians and non-Christians. His pontificate is regarded as the most consequential since the Reformation.

As expressed in his early poetry and plays and later in his philosophical works, papal documents, and teachings, John Paul’s thought was inspired by various authors and sources. Before the war, he wrote traditional poetry containing folklore elements of his hometown region. During his early university studies in Krakow, his literature teachers were two eminent professors, Stefan Kol⁄ aczkowski and Stanisl⁄ aw Pigon´, whose ideas influenced his view of literature, especially Polish romantic poetry. During the war, he authored his first dramatic works, David (1939), Job (1940), and Jeremiah (1940), which were clearly inspired by the Old Testament, ancient Greek drama, Polish history, and the ideas of his friend, the creator of the “living word” theater, Kotlarczyk. In his war-time letters to Kotlarczyk (Letters– Pakosiewicz collection) Wojtyl⁄ a indicated several Polish romantic and neo-romantic poet–prophets and playwrights whose works he read, admired, and often performed as an actor in the Kotlarczyk’s Rhapsodic Theater. The list includes Adam Mickiewicz, his national epic poem Pan Tadeusz (1834); Juliusz Sl⁄ owacki, his mystical work King-Spirit (1845–49), digressive poem Beniowski (1841), and play Samuel Zborowski (1845); Zygmunt Krasin´ ski, his prophetic drama Un-divine Comedy (1835); Stanisl⁄ aw Wyspian´ski, his national drama The Wedding (1901); Jan Kasprowicz, his visionary poetic cycle Hymns (1902), and poems from his The Book of the Poor (1916). The form and content of Wojtyl⁄ a’s own plays as well as poetry suggest that he was influenced by these poets and works but also point to an especially strong impact of Cyprian Norwid, a poetic innovator and profound Catholic thinker. Our God’s Brother (1945–50), Wojtyl⁄ a’s most complex play, contains in turn clear references to Krasin´ski’s Un-divine Comedy. Having very meditative, religious, and intellectual character, Wojtyl⁄ a’s other postwar plays and poems reveal such additional sources of inspiration and influence as the Bible, the medieval liturgical drama, the Renaissance poetry of Jan Kochanowski (1530–84), the intellectual poetry and drama of T. S. Eliot, and the phenomenological ideas of Max Scheler. The most significant influence came from the writings of the great mystics, especially St. John of the Cross, and the church fathers, especially St. Thomas Aquinas. The great literary tradition of Polish poetry and the indicated mystical and philosophical writings are strongly present not only in John Paul’s literary compositions, but also in his philosophical and theological works. His postdoctoral thesis (1959) addresses the problem of Christian ethics and the thought of Scheler. One of the thesis readers was the phenomenologist and theoretician of literature Roman Ingarden, who influenced strongly Wojtyl⁄ a’s future intellectual development. His other main philosophical works, especially Love and Responsibility (1960) and Person and Deed (1969), deal integrally with the ideas of Thomism, the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, and personalism. John Paul’s numerous papal encyclicals, apostolic constitutions, letters, exhortations, addresses, and other discourses likewise draw upon these philosophies and contain some traces of the indicated literary influences.

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