„Los Verhaerena” Tadeusza Micińskiego. Manifest z epoki katastrof

Abstract

The paper contains an analysis of a recently discovered article by Tadeusz Miciński. The article, titled “Los Verhaerena” [Verhaeren’s Fate], originally appeared in Issue 35 of the “Gazeta Polska” periodical, published in Russia at the time of World War I. In this article, Tadeusz Miciński (1878–1918), an outstanding Polish writer of the Modernist period, joins the polemics about the fate of the famous Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren (1855–1916), who tragically died in 1916 under a train. The Russian writer and anthroposophist Maximilian Voloshin (1878–1932) interpreted this death as a consequence of Verhaeren’s rejection of the esoteric doctrine and his pacifist attitude. As part of his polemics with Voloshin’s views, Miciński formulates his own credo, declaring that a writer’s duty in the face of cruelty and the evils of war is to offer active resistance, thereby defending not only the nation under attack but also art itself.