Tradycja i zmiana. Literackie modele dziewietnastowieczności: pozytywizm i „obrzeża”

Abstract

The present post-PhD monograph is dedicated to the literary ideas and themes that constitute the Polish understanding of the 19th century. The 19th century seen as a concept is a relatively new trend in studies on positivism. The concept originates from the assumption that the period from 1795 (the First Partition of Poland) to 1918 (regaining independence) is, in fact one epoch of literary and cultural development, comprising the literatures of the late Enlightenment, Romanticism, Positivism and the Young Poland movement. Such a periodization originates from the shared historical experience: the loss of political independence, the Partitions of the Commonwealth, unsuccessful uprisings, attempts to modernize culture, etc. As the author of Tradition and Change demonstrates, in the literary works created after 1864 (the crushing of the January Uprising, the time of repressions) there can be seen themes and motives that are typical of the later, more mature phase of the 19th century: the emancipatory projects (the demands of women, Jews, ethnic minorities and peasants), the projects of civilizational development (the role of science, the belief in utopia, the idea of progress), the projects of new anthropology (based on scientific mindset and on new social rules), and the projects that defined new roles of literature and art. Art is no longer a Romantic tool of cognition or an adequate representation of the real; instead, it attempts to analyse the private and the social life of man. In Chapter I (“The 19th Century as a Category”) and Chapter II (“The Origins and Metamorphoses of the Category”), the author of the monograph reconstructs the history of the 19th century as a category, pointing to the fact that it appears relatively early in the works of literary critics and historians of literature, who, at the beginning of the 20th century, tried to encapsulate the essence of the previous century. Literary studies in the decades after 1945 pushed the category to the margins of academic discourse. It was after 1989 that the studies in the 19th century as a category gained momentum; since then the literature from 1866 to 1819 has been perceived as displaying a set of shared characteristics. The following chapters bring interpretations of the works created in the second half of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries. Chapter III (“Young Positivists from Warsaw”) focuses on the social circles that contributed to the weekly “Przegląd Tygodniowy” from 1866 to 1876, showing their attitudes to literary tradition and to Europe. The circles comprised young supporters of the idea of progress and the ideas of Buckle, Darwin, Spencer and Smiles. Chapter IV (“In Orzeszkowa’s Circle”) deals with the issue of emancipation of women and Jews as represented in Orzeszkowa’s oeuvre, as well as her attitude to the category of imagination, which was given prominence by Romantics. Chapter V (“In the World of Prus”) analyses the elements of the world represented in Bolesław Prus’s epic works (chance and its role in human life, the portrayal of society, maturity, suffering). Chapter VI (“Zygmunt Gloger and Tradition”) presents Zygmunt Gloger – an outstanding publicist, historian and archaeologist, whose thought combined the elements of Romanticism and Positivism. The author of the monograph shows Gloger’s attitude to Mickiewicz, analyses his representations of women, and considers his vision of province as a cultural centre. Chapter VII (“Under Zapolska’s Eye”) examines the works of Gabriela Zapolska, the modernist writer of Positivistic and Romantic provenance. The analysis encompasses the representation of the city, the old age, and the theme of “transgression” (as compared with the writings of the Ukrainian modernist Łesia Ukrainka). Chapter VIII (“Antecedents and Returns”) collects interpretations of the literary works that either heralded the most characteristic themes of the 19thcentury literature (the picture of the emancipated woman in Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki’s poems) or bring a 20th-century reinterpretation of the themes (the 19th century as understood by Czesław Miłosz). Finally, Chapter IX (“Traditions in the Process of Alterations”) sums up all the examinations and attempts to predict perspectives for the studies in the 19th century as a category. The author of the monograph emphasizes the fact that the essence of cultural and historical experience in the 19th century was shaped and determined by the earliest literary and philosophical texts of the epoch. The “Annex” to the volume contains selected, rarely republished texts that have been analysed in the monograph: articles form Przegląd Tygodniowy, Gloger’s journalism, newspaper writings and novellas of Zapolska and Sawicka, Szczęsny Potocki’s poems, and a fragment of Maria Rodziewiczówna’s Summer of the Forest People. In the conclusion to her book the author stresses the originality of the Polish version (or the Polish cultural idiom) of the 19th century seen as a concept – granted, it is marked by the East-European thinking, but it maintains dynamic relations with ideas from the West.