Szambala i Tadeusz Miciński. W kręgu ezoterycznej geografii sakralnej i polityki początku XX wieku

Abstract

Tadeusz Miciński, called a Young Poland „magician” and „worshipper of mysteries,” is one of those writers of the turn of the 20th century who were strongly inspired by various esoteric traditions. The author of this article traces references in his work to the myth of Shambhala/Agarttha, a Tibetan legendary land that theosophists popularized in the late 19th century. This motif of esoteric sacred geography became a key generator of Micinski’s imagination in the novel Nietota. The Secret Book of the Tatra Mountains (1910). In the work, the writer made a kind of polonization of the myth of Shambhala, fusing it with themes from the Romantic heritage and the legend of knights sleeping in the Tatra Mountains. In the opinion of the author of the text, this procedure should be associated with Miciński’s awareness that the myth of the mysterious kingdom, which has its origin in Hindu-Buddhist mythology, was becoming an instrument of the imperial policy of the superpowers, including Russia, at the beginning of the 20th century. The dilemmas associated with the emergence of an imagined powerful Eurasian state, linking East and West, implementing the tenets of synarchy, the ideal image of which was to be the mystical Shambhala/Agarttha, the writer expressed in his earlier drama, Kniaź Patiomkin (1906).