Abstract
Human: situated between cosmos and earth, between individuality and humanity, is a creative subject. He is trying to intermediate between cosmic forces and his reality, create a vision which translate the world for him. Andre Gide once wrote: “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Those “new oceans” Gide has mentioned, could be understood as efforts undertaken to describe the world, attempt to explain the origins of the world (which is, as Leszek Kołakowski said, creating a myth, a cosmogony). Andre Gide and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, those two writers, French and Polish, tried to present complicated vision of cosmos and human being (as transcending project) and life from their perspective: perspective of artist. In their works (both: fictional and non-fiction) they were struggling with those problems. Their visions of world, cosmos, human being are strongly unique, original and yet – there are similar. Both of them are often portrayed as representatives of existentialism sensu largo.
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Notes
- 1.
Piotr Drobniak, Jedność w różnorodności: Europa w twórczości Jarosława Iwaszkiewicza, (Wrocław: Wydaw. Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2002).
- 2.
Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, 1894–1980, one of Polish outstanding twentieth century writers. Best remembered for his literary achievements in poetry before World War II as well as for his short-stories. Co-founder and leader of the Skamander group of experimental poets with Antoni Slonimski and Julian Tuwim in 1919. After war he was a major figure in Polish literature, though he was also criticized as a long-term political opportunist in the communist Poland. He is well known for his translation of the Soren Kierkegaard writings into Polish.
In 2011 Iwaszkiewicz’s private diaries were published. The manuscript (which was never intended for publication) was personal, detailing, among other things, the author’s sexuality, his artistic frustration, moral doubts and trivial concerns.
- 3.
Paradoxically, they do not bring the writers closer together. The journals of Iwaszkiewicz are filled with malicious remarks about the author of the “The Fruits of the Earth”. He looks for any signs of insincerity, hypocrisy, superficiality, banality on the pages of Gide’s “Journal”. Iwaszkiewicz in his personal diary wrote: “The worst thing about by life – especially now that I am old – is that I have nobody to compare myself to. Undoubtedly, I am relatively the greatest persona. But I grew like a huge mushroom covered with a small jar, hence all the deformations.” There is resentment to be felt in these words – especially that earlier he notes that had he had such an opportunity – he would have become a writer as iconic as Gide.
- 4.
Jean Paul Sartre, The Living Gide, in Gide: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. David David Littlejohn, Englewood Cliffs, (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1970).
- 5.
Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Serenite, in Opowiadania, (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1980).
- 6.
In his “Notes on Chopin” Gide also admire these piece of music: “Sfogato, has any other musician ever used this word, would he have ever had the desire, the need, to indicate the airing, the breath of breeze, which, interrupting the rhythm, contrary to all hope, comes freshening and perfuming the middle of his barcarolle?”. André Gide, Notes on Chopin, tr. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949), pp. 30–31.
- 7.
Stawiszcze – town in Kiev Oblast of central Ukraine, on the Hnylyi Tikych river, where Iwaszkiewicz spend his childhood.
- 8.
Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Ksiażka moich wspomnień (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1994).
- 9.
Helena Zaworska, “Fullness: The Writings of Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz,” Polish Perspectives, 20, no. 9 (1977), pp. 33–41.
- 10.
Andre Gide, The journals of Andre Gide, tr. Justin O’Brien, vol. III, (London: Secker & Warburg, 1949), p. 563.
- 11.
Andre Gide, The Immoralist, tr. Dorothy Bussy, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), p. 32.
- 12.
Walter Kaufman, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968) p. 320.
- 13.
Karl Kerenyi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princetown: Princeton University Press 1996), pp. 23–25.
- 14.
Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Wiersze, t.2, (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1977), pp. 37–43.
- 15.
Andre Gide, op.cit., p. 254.
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Gosek, D.I. (2014). Artist’s Personal Cosmogony: Andre Gide and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s Concept of Cosmos, Experience of Artist and Origin of Art. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Phenomenology of Space and Time. Analecta Husserliana, vol 117. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02039-6_19
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