Between maturity and revision. From Brzozowski’s footnotes to his encounter with Norwid (transl. by Tadeusz Karłowicz)

Abstract

The article is focused on the relation between Stanisław Brzozowski and Cyprian Norwid, one that is important for comprehending Polish culture and literature. Brzozowski could not meet Norwid in person, and his fascination was exclusively the fascination of a reader, but the deliberations presented here are not limited to the perspective of reception or to research on the influence. I am trying to describe the connection between the two authors as an encounter, because many of their intuitions – concerning the social world, the role of an individual in history, the coexistence of life and literature – coincided. A dynamic model of encounter allows pointing to the personalistic-dialogical way Brzozowski treated Norwid's work. I have decided to make “maturity” the key word of this article, and this is for two reasons. Firstly, Brzozowski provided one of his most significant books, Idee (Ideas), designed to be an introduction to “philosophy of historical maturity”, with an epigraph taken from Norwid's Garstka piasku (A Handful of Sand). The epigraph does not have a decorative function, but it foretells and programs reflection. Secondly, both the authors ponder over what maturity should be in the historical, anthropological and philosophical planes. In the light of the issue of maturity the community of thought between Norwid and Brzozowski appears not only as a community of common answers, but – first of all – as a community of basic and fundamental questions.