Redefiniowanie pojęcia świadomości we wczesnej fazie polskiego modernizmu: Przybyszewski - Irzykowski
Streszczenie
In my article I review some connections that joined aesthetic and psychological
issues of Polish Modernism's prose and the dynamic development of some distinctively
modern disciplines oi philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. These
dense web of relationship caused a massive "turn inward” which infiluenced the whole
culture of Modernism. Literature (as well as other arts) and science were concerned
very much with the nature and structure of individual human consciousness, its relations
to unconscious or subconscious levels of human mind.
The problem of human consciousness was crucial for the foundations of Polish
modern psychology and psychology since their institutional and professiona! organization
took shape at the beginning of the 20th century.
My main subject of interest is an intersection of the modern Polish prose and the
psychological sciences in their approaches to answer the question "how it is to be conscious?”,
I deal with two particular psychological and aesthetical projects ot Stanisław
Przybyszewski and Karol Irzykowski. Both oi them advocated the re-definition ol
human conscious experience in order to understand the hidden and unknown side of
individual subjectivity. Both of them were very familiar with philosophical, psychological
and medical discourses about normal and abnormal activities of mind. I also discuss
how the new forms of their literary work (narrative techniques, construction of a literary
character and their inner life) is connected with some new cultural and scientific
concepts of mental phenomena, fluidity of thought and feelings, sensual perceptions.
I point out the main differences between Przybyszewski and Irzykowski in order to
show the more important aspects of the early Modernist discussions on human consciousness.
The methodologicał level ot my article concerns some implications of interdisciplinary
"consciousness studies” for literary researchers. I try to historicize the problem of
consciousness as a crucial element oł Polish Modernists literary anthropology, but I give
some reasons for adopting cognitive approaches to fictional narratives as well.
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