„By nie być własną odwrotnością” – Józefa Wittlina zmagania ze szwejkizmem
“Not to Be Self Inverse” – Josef Wittlin’s Struggle with Schweikism

Summary/Abstract: This article is a comparative study of two Central European novels focusing on World War I: Jozef Wittlin’s Salt of the Earth and Jaroslav Hašek’s The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk during the World War. The first part of the text shows the history of the reception of the Czech novel in Poland, its influence on Wittlin’s work and the discussion with it that the Galician writer undertakes in the pages of Salt of the Earth. In the second part of the text, The History of the Irrational Hero, there are shown the philosophical issues of both works, specifically, the retreat from the Enlightenment philosophy of rationalism and the advent of “weak ontology” (G. Vattimo). There are analyzed the disintegration of the previous European order, the destruction of the identity of the main characters, and the symbolism and semantics of the representation of World War I common to the both writers. I ask whether the protagonist of Salt of the Earth – Piotr Niewiadomski – is Švejk’s alter ego, his opposite, or a representative of an alternative history of “provincial Galicia” in contrast to “central” Prague.

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