Jakich przemyśleń dostarczył Słownik polskiej krytyki literackiej 1764–1918? Mój komentarz retrospektywny
What afterthoughts follow The Dictionary of Polish Literary Criticism, 1764–1918? My retrospective commentary

Summary/Abstract: The article is a loose commentary on Słownik polskiej krytyki literackiej 1764–1918 [Dictionary of Polish Literary Criticism, 1764–1918], ed. by Teresa Kostkiewiczowa, Grażyna Borkowska and Magdalena Rudkowska. Following Hippolyte Taine, among others, the author highlights a dual role of Classicism in the changes taking place in the public life in France: the progressive current in the seventeenth century, harmonised with the development of science; and, a hundred years later, a petrified trend that incited the need for revolutionary change. The situation in Poland looks interesting against this background: according to Piotr Chmielowski, the specificity of the north-eastern borderland of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the transition from Classicism to Romanticism was evolutionary and peaceful. The other comments highlight the need to continue the work on the output of some critics (such as Józef Tokarzewicz, for instance) and point to the civilisational and mental wound inflicted by World War II in the consciousness and subconsciousness of Poles, which informs the decisions delimiting Polish culture – and literary criticism in specific – of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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