The historiosophical project of Cyprian Norwid and August Cieszkowski

Abstract

This article investigates convergences between ideas introduced in the literature of Cyprian Norwid and the writer’s engagement with August Cieszkowski’s philosophical worldview. In numerous Norwid works from 1848 to 1883 – specifi cally the poem “Psalm of Psalms”, the drama “Zwolon”, the poem “Promethidion”, the short story “Civilization”, the poem “Assunta”, and prose works “Stigma”, and “Silence” – the poet provides a methodology for interacting with Cieszkowski’s historiosophy as the latter presented it in his powerful treatises. Throughout his literary career, Norwid engaged in dialogue with Cieszkowski’s theories of philosophical millenarism and of historiosophical holism. In his fi nal tract, “Silence”, however, he created his own revised and modernized theory of historiosophy (uniting him with Tadeusz Miciński and Marian Zdziechowski, twentieth-century creators of moral and metaphysical historiosophy). Finally, the short story “Stigma”, presumably written in 1881, can be recognized as Norwid’s valediction of anachronic philosophy in the nineteenth century.