Odsłanianie mitu
Versions of Myth

Summary/Abstract: The article is a review of the book Versions of Myth. Metaphysical Sources of Mythical Thought in Selected Ideological Projects of Polish Literature in 20th and 21st century (edited by A. Szóstak, Zielona Góra 2018). Anna Szóstak’s work deserves particular recognition, since she translates an- thropological explanations of the theory of myth to the image of the world and the human being in literature, in a sense proving this way the possibility of applying theory in practice and justifying its presence in human life. The work as a whole reflects the spiritual unease of the contemporary humanity and our existential search for values allowing us to endow life with meaning – in the face of the crisis of the mechanistic paradigm, political catastrophes annihilating the old order and forcing the creation of a new one, and finally in the face of our individual inability to come to terms with transience. The fact that this crisis is taking on catastrophic proportion is testified by the common turn towards myth (all the texts analysed by the author – however different – confirm this constatation). This is a descent to a lower, more archaic level of perception (descending into one’s own self) and this is what usually happens in the face of a great, collective threat (C. G. Jung, E. Cassirer). The reviewed work may thus in a sense become a basis for a diagnosis by a psychoanalyst or even a sociologist. Another of its merits is bringing the no- tions of myth and metaphysics closer to a reader whose idea of these is superficial, and therefore by definition erroneous (numerous publications do not exhaust the topics).

• Details
• Contents