Artysta, sztuka i społeczeństwo. Spory i polemiki wokół Confiteor Stanisława Przybyszewskiego

Abstract

Artist, Art and Society: The Brouhaha around Przybyszewski’s Confiteor Stanisław Przybyszewski’s famous manifesto Confiteor, published in 1899 in the Kraków literary periodical ‘Życie’, evoked the most incandescent exchanges of views in the annals of Polish literary criticism. Its author, aspiring to the heights of a latter day coryphaeus among Polish modernists, formulated a programme aimed polemically at the prevailing concept of native literature – one freeing the artist from the constraints of all obligations without, placing art at the giddy level of the metaphysical absolute. Opponents of Przybyszewski were outraged in particular by the Confiteor thesis of the amoral and irrational nature of creativity, whose animus was to become the famous ‘naked soul’, considered to be the essence of being. Przybyszewski’s manifesto was supported by some modernist critics, foremost Jerzy Żuławski and to a lesser degree, Ignacy Matuszewski. On the other hand, Confiteor was vociferously opposed by positivists such as Piotr Chmielowski and conservatists of the ilk of Jan Pawelski and Teodor Jeske-Choiński. Many no doubt that Przybyszewski’s cassus belli fulfilled the role of his generation’s most singular supplication.