Słowiańskie "Dzieci szatana" – profetyczna powieść Stanisława Przybyszewskiego

Abstract

This paper discusses the relation between Stanislaw Przybyszewski’s writings and the artistic manifesto Confiteor. It demonstrates that the novel Devil’s Children in the context of the dissertation Devil’s Synagogue implements the manifesto. The analysis of the works reveals the Manichaean deposits of spiritual archeology in Przybyszewski’s characters as Slavs. The analysis demonstrates that only the author is aware of the destructive nature of the radically anti-world theological, cosmological, anthropological, and eschatological dualism. The characters are masks of his subconscious which is brought into daylight. The Slavic children of the Devil, similarly to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s characters, by destroying the world destroy themselves. Their manner of self-destruction is the destruction of the world. They commit suicide, they die of the illness of the soul, they murder, they set fires, and they long for the end of the world in the glowing of fire. Their fates are displayed as a cautionary tale against a regression into the dark subconscious. The lack of individualization, that is the restraint of driving urges and not including them in the structure of personality, is explained by the author of the article to be an eruption of destructiveness predicting the 20th century revolutions and crimes of totalitarianism.