Polish Way to E-Literature from Baroque to 21st Century

In this paper I present the origins of Polish proto-hypertexts starting from the Baroqe and ending at the communist period. The comparative approach shows us that the Polish roots of e-literature are - to a large extent - linked with European ones. In the Baroque we see the rise of Polish ergodic works (among others Wojciech Wa?niowski, of Teodor's Jakub Tr?becki, Miko?aj Lubomirski). Twentieth century avant-garde give us some more examples of works of poetry and fiction that employ with words and images (e.g. Julian Przybo?,). But stiil these examples may be regarded as mirror-images of the proto-cybertexts of French, German, or Italian authors.

It was only after the Second World War that this has changed, although more in terms of quantity than quality. The communism didn't disturb and even supported the works of concrete poetry (e.g. Stanis?aw Dro?d?) to come into existence. The better part of the heritage of our native concrete poetry movement was reshaped in the last decades of XXth century by authors whose works were given the label of "Liberatura" – total literature in which the text and the physical, spatial aspects of a book constitute an inseparable whole.

However isolating Poland from Western Europe had its impact on the development of e-literature sensu stricto. This is what I would also like to present in my paper, showing factors which influenced the present state of e-literature in Poland.

This paper is based on an article published in #4 of the "Magazyn Techsty": "Islamic Gardens and Baroque Texts-Machines: Advice for Hypertext Gardeners" . In first part of this article (more correctly one of…) named "Gate of Gardens" I am describing how inspiring wealth and beauties awareness of old Islamic gardens can be for authors and researchers of hypertexts, The second part: "Gate of Words" is presenting ergodic nature of Polish baroque works, the virtuality of baroque cathedrals etc, relating to European achievements.