How did the Polish nation survive without its own state? – Anna Artwinska reexplains the 19th century

On the mental map of Europe, what Alfred Jarry wrote in his 1906 surrealist play "King Ubu" still applies to Poland: "As far as the action is concerned, it takes place in Poland, and therefore nowhere."

The Western public's ignorance of Polish literature is almost encyclopedic. Leipzig-based Polish scholar Anna Artwinska, together with renowned co-authors, now presents an important book that analyzes Polish Romantic and Realist literature, including its impact on the 20th century.

The presentation focuses on the "long 19th century," which in Poland's case lasted from 1795 to 1918. After the third partition, Poland disappeared from the European map as a state and survived only as a cultural nation. Only after the downfall of the partitioning monarchical powers Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia was Poland able to regain its statehood.

This made literature all the more important, becoming the most important medium for social self-enlightenment. For a long time, the Romantic paradigm dominated: history was perceived as a theophany, as God's self-revelation. On this basis, sacrificial myths emerged that saw Poland as the suffering messiah for the freedom of Europe.

The national poets Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Slowacki indulged in esoteric fantasies and even based their own biographies on mystical plans. At the same time, cultural patterns emerged that later fully developed in 20th-century literature. A catastrophic mood dominated Romantic writing and formed the basis for literary reimaginings that found expression in the premonitions of doom in the 1930s and in the documentation of the omnipresent destruction after World War II.

Anna Artwinska includes many previously neglected topics in her overview. She addresses a fundamental dilemma of Polish society: How could the cohesion of a nation be ensured when the nobility insisted on its privileges over the uneducated peasants? The emancipation of women also began in the 19th century with courageous and successful female authors such as Eliza Orzeszkowa and Maria Konopnicka.

Ultimately, the relationship between Poles, both toward Jews and Ukrainians, revealed a whole spectrum of possible behaviors, ranging from assimilation and cultural exchange to oppression. Moreover, the perception of Russia was not always negative: Young Poles viewed the rise of socialist groups in the Tsarist Empire with hope, and at the same time, they were also enthusiastic about the great Russian novelists. Paradoxically, however, it was precisely Polish educational activists, who also translated Russian literature, who were persecuted by the Tsarist authorities.

After 1945, Poland was no longer a multicultural state: During World War II, the Holocaust had ravaged Poland, the population suffered massive losses, entire cities were razed to the ground, and ethnic expulsions occurred. The almost homogeneous Polish-Catholic society had yet to find its place in Europe. The traditions of the long century also guided this process, as Anna Artwinska demonstrates in her book.

Anna Artwinska (ed.): Polish Literature in the Long 19th Century. Narr-Verlag, Tübingen 2025. 352 pp., e-book CHF 22.–.