Spór między Mickiewiczem a Krasińskim o miejsce Żydów wśród Polaków
A Dispute between Mickiewicz and Krasiński over the Place of Jews among Poles

Summary/Abstract: The article includes an analysis of Mickiewicz’s and Krasiński’s attitude towards the Israelites, understood as an ethnic-religious community, and presents a long-lasting argument of the two writers concerning the settlement of Polish-Jewish relationship. For over two decades Mickiewicz worked on the concept of Polish-Jewish reconciliation, and opted for giving the Israelites in the future Poland a full citizenship. He also supported the need of ecumenic closeness of christianity and judaism. Krasiński saw the Jews, also those converted, as opponents of Polishness and enemies of christianity; he predicted their long confrontation with the noble-country nation. In the modern judaism Krasiński discerned the religion contaminated with the sin of rejecting Jesus Christ. In Krasiński’s view, religious anti-judaism mingles with elements of antisemitism. The various approaches to the Jews derive partially from the opposing projects of national community which both poets professed. Mickiewicz was close to the idea of nation being a community of free and equal people, not differentiated by sexes, ethnicity, and religion, while Krasiński turned to ethnocentric formula of nation as an entity composed of two classes (nobility and country), a being characterised by tribal, cultural and religious borderlines.

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