"Vade-mecum": projekt krytycznej refleksji społecznej (Cyprian Norwid - Stefan Żeromski)

We can see in Norwid’s writings the artistic process, developing in the subsequent stages of feeling that almost whole reality of his times was built on lies. Not only on intentional lies but on all forms of hypocrisy, falsehood, and collective and social illusions. T he dialectics of Norwid’s thematic and formal inventiveness is based on finding and assessing the situations where literary means can be used to separate the truth from different falsehoods. And the poet shows enormous ingenuity while basing this not on religious and moral judgements but ethical and cognitive diagnoses. In my article I show how the working of Norwid’s disillusions – which can be compared to Hermeneutics of Suspicion – touches on the basic issues such as speech, work, art, progress and eventually the Gospel message. The apologist of work can see the symptoms of its alienation. The worshipper of the cult of art classifies many varieties of false art. He discovers manipulative potential of the language in rhetoric dexterity of his contemporaries. He shows to the enthusiasts of progress that the 19th century is in fact the age of involution. Norwid’s civilization project proved to be suggestive to Stefan Żeromski or Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz.