Mieczysław Porębski – Writer of Being and Myth Reading „Z. Po-wieść" with Szymutko

Abstract

The article is devoted to the interpretation of selected motifs of Z. Po-wieść – the only strictly fictional work of the art critic and art theorist Mieczysław Porębski – in the context of Stefan Szymutko’s concepts and studies. This Silesian literary scholar was particularly interested in the works of Teodor Parnicki, with which the aforementioned “postmodern” historical novel is sometimes compared. Z. Po-wieść depicts the journey of the eponymous character, the reborn Z., through the history of European civilization. Such a plot illustrates the confrontation with “the great history” (history-being) and serves to create a certain overall vision. A comparative reading of Szymutko’s statements and Porębski’s book (as well as some of his other texts) highlights the problem of the relationship between history, reality and literature, which is particularly important for both protagonists of the article. While Szymutko clearly opposes literature (the domain of words) to empirical historical reality, Porębski vindicates the former as a tool for confronting historicity and defending individual existence. In spite of the cruelty of historical reality, artistic creation that corresponds with it allows for the achievement of catharsis and the only indelible “pleasure of history” (Szymutko’s formulation). According to Porębski, myth, like literature belonging to the so-called sphere of the third logical value, has a similar effect. And literature has the ability to give a mythic – timeless – actuality to what is incidental and ephemeral.