ART AT HIGH NOON! WORKSHOPS FOR SENIORS
Subject: The death of literature?
Presented by: Jerzy Kamiński
The death of literature? Will books as we know them today survive in the years to come?
For centuries, books have played an extremely significant role in science, culture, entertainment… It was in their pages that new ideas and theories were announced to the world. It is from them that subsequent generations have learned about the achievements of their forebears, often creatively developing their thoughts.
Until a dozen years ago, reading books was one of the leisure activities! Literature was a source of knowledge, a window to the world through which, without moving from one’s place, one could get to know distant landscapes, cultures, customs.
Today, literature – and by extension books, especially traditional, paper books – are a hipster fad; reading books is synonymous with backwardness, non-modernity. This is not an exaggeration – according to a study by the National Library, in 2022 (the results of the study are announced in April, so last year’s results will be known in three months’ time) 66 percent of our country’s citizens have not read ANY BOOK!!! Someone will say – modern literature is not only paper versions, but also electronic versions (e-book) and audio versions, read by a reader (audiobook), which have become popular in recent years. The problem is that NL’s research also covers these newer versions.
Why is this happening? What makes literature no longer such an important part of world culture? World culture, because Poland does not stand out in any particularly negative way against the background of global reading trends.
Will traditional paper books soon become a costly trinket or a tasty morsel for the increasingly scarce connoisseurs and bibliophiles? Can this trend be stopped? What can be done to reduce it?
Jerzy Kaminski – journalist, publicist, author, and producer of television programmes.
Art in the High Noon is a series of meetings devoted to art and culture in a broad sense, addressed to people aged 60+.
05.02.2024, 12:00
admission free