Rany Europy. Józef Ignacy Kraszewski i Stefan Buszczyński w sporach o kondycję cywilizacji europejskiej
The Wounds of Europe. Józef Ignacy Kraszewski and Stefan Buszczyński in Dispute over the Condition of European Civilisation

Summary/Abstract: The title of this study refers to Stefan Buszczyński’s book entitled Die Wunden Europas (The Wounds of Europe) published in 1872, which is the starting point for outlining the context in which Polish critique of the European civilisation developed after the January Uprising. Both personal and literary relations that were formed between two eminent writers of that era, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski and Stefan Buszczyński, made it possible to draw conclusions about the specificity of Polish disputes regarding the condition of European civilisation and the metaphors alluding to various interpretations of catastrophism, such as the one developed by Georges Cuvier. The study also discusses the reception of Buszczyński’s work La décadence de L’Europe (The Fall of Europe) which was published anonymously in French and which constituted the starting point for the discussion on whether or not Poles have a moral and intellectual right to feel as part of the nineteenth-century European community.

• Details
• Contents