Republiki literackiej nowoczesności

Abstract

The development of the concept of modern literature in Poland, documented with literary criticism and essay writing, constitutes the main theme of the book. In the presented overview, the selected literary and strictly intellectual projects, included in the texts of Stanisław Brzozowski and Czesław Miłosz, were taken into consideration. The examples illustrate the significant factors which influenced the development of modernity in Polish literature of the previous century. It has been illustrated that different writers of successive generations experienced and defined the concept of modernity differently and that, in various historical periods, they drew different conclusions in respect of the artistic texts realisations. Each of the book’s chapters is based on the assumption that the category of modernity is historically relative. Thus, the subsequent parts of this study present the development of modernity in chronological order. The initial stages of the history of modernity in Polish literature of the 20th century, which were selected as crucial, include the analysis of the aspect of Stanisław Brzozowski’s (1878—1911) artistic activity that is reflected in the theory of postcolonial studies, since until now it has not been the subject to interpretation with regard to this critic’s writing. The assumptions of this theoretical approach may also be applied to the research into the later literary periods in Poland, the post- 1989 period. Tadeusz Żeleński (Boy) (1874—1941), the propagator of the rapid cultural changes, has become an advocate of the literary and social modernity in the interwar period. The writers creating in political exile after 1945, also actively participated in the process of shaping the Polish modern cultural awareness. Like i.a. Czesław Miłosz (1911—2004) and Tymon Terlecki (1905—2000), they represented various ideas about modernity, ranging from the liberal to the conservative ones. In these terms, the intellectual and artistic propositions which might have seemed classicist or traditional, were turned against the concept based on a considerable dose of mystification, for instance, the totalitarian social practices. Such a liberal and democratic attitude may be observed in the literary criticism of Czesław Miłosz, Paweł Hertz (1918—2001), and Tomasz Burek (born 1938). The book ends with the analyses of statements issued by literary critics participating in the creation of the modern trend in the contemporary literature, but not in the least belonging to the avant-garde. With regard to the artistic output of the older and the consecutive generations of writers and critics, for instance those belonging to the New Wave generation, the author pays less attention to the extreme avant-garde projects than to the projects which remain related to the contemporary literary references, reactivating the existential experiences of the earlier and the more recent past, as well as the present. This type of modernity strives for a broad social reception. Hence, it is not the state of elimination, but the state of homeostasis of tradition and contemporaneity that is expected to be a remedy for the canons of modernity favoured in the critical activities presented in the book.