Abstract: | Prose and poetic works, as well as diaries by Jarosław
Iwaszkiewicz are permeated by the cult of beauty. Despite
temporary doubts in its sense and the attempts to turn towards
a real life, parnasism started in writer’s early works, changes in
a real love to art and culture during his long life. In the case of
music arts, it is somehow determined by writer’s professional
education in this field. When it comes to plastic arts, it derives
from self-education basing on constant visits to museums,
returns to his favourite works of art, conversations on art with
his friends-artists. Even at the end of his long life, Iwaszkiewicz
feels a constant force to sightsee and constant admiration of art.
The writer’s taste leaned towards classics (Correggio), but
also those striking with their meaningful expression
(Caravaggio), however, remaining within the boundaries of
a realistic recognizability. Iwaszkiewicz admired
Impressionism, too. He perceived works of arts through
contemplation, permeation into the work’s content or even
through conjecturing his own narrative motives on the basis of
the plot initiated in a picture, which manifests a professional
instinct of a writer. Iwaszkiewicz, though, despite grounded
tastes, was a fussy art connoisseur. A work reception was often
determined by his mood, personal situation or even weather,
which he was aware of after all.
Iwaszkiewicz’s attitude to art takes from a nineteenth century
tradition of its reception. Art is a sense of life through which the
world perception takes place. Communing with the beauty, an
intuitive one at an intellectual, emotional and sensual level,
brings comfort and metaphysical satisfaction. Searching for
transcendence through art intensifies in prose (Pasje błędomierskie)
and poetry (a collection of poems Inne życie) especially in
the 1930s.
Fine arts also play an important role in biographies of
writer’s prose characters. Protagonists as Edgar Szyller from
Sława i chwała or an old writer Zammoyłło from Pasje
błędomierskie constitute to a great extent the writer’s alter ego
when it comes to their opinions on art and writing. The problems
of writing and creating, writer’s condition and the art-ethics
opposition constitute a topic of many prose works by
Iwaszkiewicz. The writer also reviewed books on art, writing
column features to newspapers (published later on in Rozmowy
o książkach) on a daily basis where he clearly expressed his
aesthetic views as well. |