Typy emigracyjnych postaw

Abstract

The starting point of the present article is the state of research on the generational, social, political and artistic diversity of Polish emigration after 1945 and on the emergence of two different, independent programmes and models of emigration, formulated in the following circles: London (mainly in the weekly magazine Wiadomości – isolation from the West and from the country under communist rule) and Paris (in the monthly Kultura – integration). The author describes the fate and choices of the writers who co-created them, started to cooperate with them or returned to the pages of both periodicals. She argues that their activity outlined the dynamics of intellectual life in exile. Particular attention is paid to Czesław Miłosz, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński and Konstanty Jeleński, who cooperated with Kultura. She analyses Herling-Grudziński’s and Konstanty Jeleński’s journalistic speeches also in non-emigrant magazines, respectively the Italian Tempo Presente and the French-language Preuve, proving the writers’ commitment to the programme for the defence of Polish and European culture as articulated in the first issue of Kultura, which grew out of a sense of threat to the most important values of European heritage.