W kręgu paryskiej "Kultury". Maria Czapska o roli emigracji

Abstract

The article contains reflections on emigration perceived from the perspective of Maria Czapska and the works of Juliusz Słowacki and Adam Mickiewicz analyzed by this historian of literature. Czapska's view of the role of emigration stems from her personal experience as a writer associated with the Polish emigration community centered around the Literary Institute and "Kultura”; her worldview and her interest in 19th century literature and culture. Czapska expresses her opinion on the role of twentieth -century political emigration in the text Z doświadczeń Wielkiej Emigracji published in the emigration journal "Kultura". In it, Maria Czapska shows an analogy between the nineteenth-century emigration resulting from the defeats of national uprisings and the twentieth-century emigration after World War II (both of them were the result of the new slavery) to indicate the contemporary meaning of political exile. The writer puts forward the postulate of active and engaged emigration, inspired by the thinking that constitutes the Księgi narodu polskiego i pielgrzymstwa polskiego by Mickiewicz and is present in Juliusz Słowacki's text Do emigracji o potrzebie idei: Czapska denies passive waiting, encourages to act, and the motivation to do so is release. The writer is close to Mickiewicz's understanding of emigration as a space for the idea of pilgrimage to become present, and the nineteenth-century tendency to combine religion and political and historical discourse.