Bolesław Miciński and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz: From the History of an Intellectual and Artistic Journey

Abstract

This article describes mutual contacts and shared ideas of two outstanding writers and philosophers, Bolesław Miciński and Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), who despite a significant age difference were close friends. The philosophical problems they raised relate to the interwar intellectual atmosphere in Poland and Europe as well as lively discussions among literary critics and avantgarde writers. Witkiewicz was the first Pole to become acquainted with psychoanalysis; he made it significantly more familiar to Miciński, although their interpretations of Freud’s theory clearly diverged. Miciński was also a strong supporter of the Pure Form theory and realized its propositions in his works. He was also an advocate of a scientific approach to literary criticism through its firm grounding in philosophy. Witkacy was also a patron of his aesthetic views which were most fully set forth in an unpublished thesis, Reality and its Deformation in Art (1937), written under Władysław Tatarkiewicz’s supervision. They were both strongly opposed to any reductionism in philosophy; they were opponents of Vienna Circle physicalism and the anti-metaphysical approach of the Lvov–Warsaw school. In particular, Miciński saw the weakness of analytical thought and sought a more capacious form for philosophy. The final period of Miciński’s work shows a strong objection to totalitarianism and a mechanization of life which was also characteristic of Witkacy. For the author of A Portrait of Kant, Witkiewicz was surely a master of philosophy, but the question of how much was borrowed from the younger colleague by Witkacy, the author of The Shoemakers, remains open.