Józef Ignacy Kraszewski wobec postępu cywilizacyjnego w Europie. Na marginesie relacji z podróży
Józef Ignacy Kraszewski Towards European Civilisation Progress. On the Margin of Travel Account

Summary/Abstract: Kraszewski’s understanding of progress is composed of many elements: knowledge of natural sciences, technical inventions awareness, supported by professional archive research in history and the processes that control it, observation of economical, industrial and social changes in Poland and in Europe, as well as perfect education in art history and the ability of defining the development of particular aesthetic styles. Kraszewski’s attitude to the quickly developing European civilisation evolved. He used the categories of progress to observe the social situation of Volhynia, where he lived, the arising in Warsaw consumerist lifestyle and the Western Europe economical development, the expressions of which are his memories entitled “Kartki z podróży (Notes from Travels)”. In the collection Kraszewski highlights lifestyle unification and decline of national values. Under the cover of easier, more comfortable and more ordered than in the East existence, he finds scratches, cracks, bursts, and traits of future ruin. The novelist, as earlier the Enlightened critics of the idea of progress did, rejects the praise of progressivism based on appearances, and looks for solid ethical fundaments in the real manifestations of contemporary to him economical life, as well as in buildings and in monuments of national history. He is interested in the progress based on the best Mediterranean tradition which also respects individual and national realisations.

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