PROBLEM PROFESJI LITERATA, LITERATURY I CZYTELNICTWA W POLSKIM I ROSYJSKIM SZKICU FIZJOLOGICZNYM W LATACH TRZYDZIESTYCH-CZTERDZIESTYCH XIX WIEKU
THE PROBLEM OF THE WRITER ’S PROFESSION, LITERATURE AND READING IN POLISH AND RUSSIAN PHYSIOLOGICAL ESSAY OF THE 30’S AND 40’S OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: In the 30’s and 40’s of the nineteenth century the problems of literary life had often been within the scope of interest of Polish and Russian authors of physiological essays. There had often been writings about “the masters of pen” but they were shown in a different light than it had been in the previous decades. The writers and poets idealized by Romantic literature were replaced by the literary men (literatti). They were treated as representatives of a profession — people who make a concrete paid work. Generally, they were presented in a negative light, their moral and ethical principles were considered to be doubtful as well as their professional education and intellectual values. The literary men were devoted separate monograph essays, but they also appeared in the works in which they were characterized as one of the kinds of a given type. In many Polish and Russian physiological essays there were references (direct or allusive) to facts or phenomena from the literary life of those times. In Polish essays of the kind they often appear, but most often the references are general and casual and in Russian essays the references are informative and evaluative. In both Polish and Russian literatures the authors of essays willingly referred to the French literature. In the Russian pictorial literary output the tendency to remind Gogol and to refer to his works is also noticeable. “The physiologists” of both countries also undertook the subject of reading. They paid attention to the insufficient number of readers, inapproprite selection of reading lists and much too big interest in foreign literature and underestimation of the readers’ own (native) literature.

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