Artyści i filistry (opracowała i artykułem wstępnym opatrzyła Aneta Mazur) Na tropach tajemniczego M.K
Artists and philistines (developed and annotated by Aneta Mazur) On the Trail of a Mysterious M.K.

Summary/Abstract: The article titled Artists and Philistines, published in 1897 in the “Kurier Niedzielny”, a moderated weekly with a compromising orientation (publisher: Maria Chełmońska, editors: Ludomir Grendyszyński),is an example of a voice about artist-society relationship typical of the end of the century. The author takes an indirect position: he criticizes both the anti-art social climate and the artists themselves, who wrongly accuse a society solidly fulfilling its duties of being “philistine”. The peculiarities of the script, the cryptic code and the ambiguous attitude of the journalist, as well as a number of clues in literary and artistic life, constitute a set of data that hypothetically propose a possible author of the text hidden under the initials “M.K”. MariaKonopnicka’s candidate is supported by the fact of her cooperation with the magazine and her distance from “young”, anti-Nietzschean Judgements. Other premises indicate a representative of the second generation of Positivists involving some of the persons closely related to the magazine, and who may have had the knowledge referred to in the article: Maria Chełmońska of Korwin-Szymanowski, Wacław Marian Karczewski and Marian Gawalewicz. On the other hand, the clue of the initials and the author’s good orientation in German-language literature would lead to lesser-known commentators, humanists or Germanists, who also represent the younger generations: Maria Feldman (publishing as Maria Kleinman and Maria Kreczowska), Maksymilian Kantecki or Michał Konopiński. The issue of authorship seems, however, to remain undecidable. None of the potential applicants meet all conditions and do not fully reflect the premises suggested by the context of different voices.

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