NIETZSCHE AND POLISH MODERNISM

The Polish Modernists in the last decade of the nineteenth and in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century followed in the wake of Polish Positivism. They represent a revival in Polish intellectual life in all spheres of art: music (Rdzycki, Szymanowski, Fitelberg, Szeluto), painting (WyspiaAski, SlewiAski) and literature. The movement's vitality in the sphere of literary art (poetry and prose) produced a particularly rich harvest in a variety of forms (lyrical and epic poetry, new forms in the novel). Prominent names are associated with this period of Polish intellectual history: the already mentioned Stanislaw WyspiaAski (1869-1907), a multifaceted genius, known as a painter, poet and dramatist; Stanislaw Przybyszewski (1868-1927), a chief proponent of the new forms in literary art, a creative artist, and an active disseminator and propagandist as publicist and editor of the influential Cracow periodical Zycie [Life]; Zenon Miriam-Przesmycki (1861-1944), poet and publicist, editor of Zycie and the highly elitist periodical Chimera. Polish Modernism, which called itself Mtoda Polska [Young Poland], included such outstanding poets as Jan Kasprowicz (1860-1926), Kazimierz Przerwa Tetmajer (1865-1940), Leopold Staff (1878-1957), the prose writer and essayist Waclaw Berent (1873-1940), and the brilliant literary essayist and intellectual spokesman of the period, Stanislaw Brzozowski (1876-1911). This list of names cannot be exhaustive, but it includes the most prominent ones.