Sfera szarości : studia nad literaturą i myślą osiemnastego wieku

Abstract

The above pages are an attempt at-a reading, or a misreading, of the Age of Reason as already contaminated by what might termed ’the sphere of grcyncss’, by dark and unclear spaces which the Enlightenment treats as reasonably explicable, as naturally ordered and organized according to some natural rules and laws, and which nevertheless somehow evade explication and a clear, simple representation by means o f a transparent message, for instance. Such dark spheres are observable in the writings of the pillars of the English Enlightcnmant such as Alexander Pope or Doctor Johnson, for instance, but first of all in the texts o f those whom Pope locked in Bedlam for ’talking with gods ’, in the texts of Swedenborg, Blake, or Smart at which we have a closer look in order to somehow mark the role of the marginal, of the unclear in the construction of the reasonably ordered, enlightened centres and systems.