Granica nowoczesności

Abstract

The author presents a short account of the debate on Modernism (in renewed meaning of the term) in the Polish literary history. He highlights the positions which indicate a dual character of modern literature (e.g. its avant-garde and neo-classical currents). He concurs with the opinion that what decided on peculiarity of literary modernism was a dialectics of these two main tendencies. This dialectics is visible not only in the currents of the epoch but also on the level of individual works. In Poland modern literature reached its decadent phase in 1960s, but it was so diverse that perceiving it as a homogenous system is impossible. Postmodernism should be connected not only with deconstruction of the meaning and the system of modern literature but also with the situation in Poland carrying out this process in 1990s.