Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński: Une critique littéraire engagée dans l’exploration de la vie et de l’autonomie de l’art
Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński: A literary criticism committed to the exploration of life and the autonomy of art

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the Polish literary critic and translatorTadeusz Boy-Żeleński achieved two contrasting goals in his work. The author shows howimportant the context, external to the ground of the literary work itself, is for Boy, (andhe reflects on the specific reasons why Boy adopts this attitude), while also describing theway Boy refuses simultaneously to consider it as a clue which could allow us to decode themeaning and deeper senses of a literary work. Moreover, Boy emphasizes the means greatwriters used to invent in order to transform reality in his own art and to insert the figuresthey created into an immanent dynamic evolution of literary patterns.The author sets forth a thesis that Boy’s method of digging out the genuine formof the works he analysed was due to the careful attention he gave to the oral and, morebroadly, the sonic dimension of human experience, which to him was a source of constantfertilization. At the same time, the article explores the way this sensibility to soundswas deeply rooted in Boy’s direct life experiences — his relationship both to Paris andto the modernist literary movement called Young Poland “Młoda Polska” led by suchoutstanding figures as Stanisław Przybyszewski and Stanisław Wyspiański with whom Boyfrequented Cracow’s various cafés and theatres as a young man.

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