“An exact statement in everyday speech”: on the essayistic “silvichness” of Polish prose
- DOI
- 10.5922/vestnikpsy-2025-4-7
- Pages
- 68-79
Abstract
The essayistic tradition of Old Polish prose is examined, represented by authors of the Renaissance (Rey, Górnicki, Modrzejewski), Baroque (Pasek, B. Chmielowski), and Enlightenment (Krasicki) periods. The creator of the Polish essayistic canon was Mikołaj Rey, the author of the book Zerciadło, which Mickiewicz compared to Montaigne’s Essays. The role of the essayistic element in the literary diaries of 20th-century Polish writers (Andrzejewski, Gombrowicz, Herling-Grudziński) is considered. It is stated that the tradition of Polish essayism, spanning the Modern and Contemporary periods, is based on the dominance of the “genre block silva” (S. Skwarczyńska), whose genesis in the world literary context goes back to Antiquity, and which in the postclassical period marks a new stage of literary self-consciousness, where the use of “silva” forms acquires the character of artistic play with the reader. In Gombrowicz’s Diary, the Old Polish forms of silva rerum are presented in a parodic aspect. Herling-Grudziński’s Diary Written at Night, as a collection of comments on what was read, preserves the genre memory of lucubrationes — nocturnal “reflections” presented in the works of the philosopher of Late Antiquity, Aulus Gellius.