Chapliniada w kręgach lewicy literackiej i artystycznej lat 20.
The Chaplinade in Left-wing Literary and Artistic Circles of the 1920s

Summary/Abstract: The article describes how Chaplin’s films were received by left-wing literary and artistic circles in Central and Eastern Europe of the 1920s. The author demonstrates how Berlin dadaists used his image in the political struggle with the ruling SPD party, and how Soviet, Czech and Serbian constructivists combined his acting with the art of the machine, and the message of his films with communist ideology. From Ivan Goll’s famous publications (Apologie des Charlot; Die Chapliniade) avant-garde left-wing circles treated Charlie Chaplin on a par with a fighting working class hero, imposing a political interpretation of his films. It was the same in Poland, where in the context of a pan European fascination with Chaplin of the left-wing avant-garde the circles of the “New Culture”, futurists and Warsaw constructivists interpreted the American comedian’s work in a similar way. This common for Germany, Soviet Russia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the Balkans dadaist-constructivist scheme of identifying Chaplin’s films with the voice of the struggling working class was seen as a proof of the need for a radical revolution in art and the creation of new proletariat art available to the masses.

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