„Confessiones” pozytywisty. O „Grzechach dzieciństwa” Bolesława Prusa
“Confessions” of a Positivist. On Bolesław Prus’s “Sins of Childhood”

Summary/Abstract: Beata Obsulewicz’s sketch is an attempt to explicate the meanings which in Bolesław Prus’s text are connected with the concept of sin. The term “sin” was placed by Prus in the title of his short story, and its narrative structure of is close to a form of a penitent’s revealing his sins while confessing. Such factors add to an interpretation of Sins of Childhood as a specific type of confessions – specific, since modified by humor peculiar to Prus. Seeing the sin as a key to interpret the short story, we may disclose the mastery of the positivist writer to analyze children and adults character psyches, and the subtle use of biblical tropes, as well as the author’s attitude towards the sin as to an important phenomenon of second part of 19th c. theology and customs. Obsulewicz concludes that Prus, operating according to the idea of organicysm, places the sin mainly on the plane of social relations and only merely signals the references of the sin to the transcendental (God).

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