Czytając – próbować się. Praktyki lekturowe Józefa Czapskiego
To Test Oneself by Reading. Józef Czapski’s Experience as a Reader

Summary/Abstract: This sketch deals with Józef Czapski’s reading experiences and the persona of the reader contained in his texts. Selected essays and journal entries have been treated as textual protocols of a certain experience: the incessant process of becoming a reader vis-à-vis the text. The specific feature of the way in which Czapski read was its existential dimension – reading involves the author. By reading not only intellectually but also spiritually Czapski-the reader moved the texts from the constant addresses of the meanings ascribed to them and introduced them into life – he activated meanings and tested their value. In the same fashion he permitted the texts to lead him beyond the heretofore comprehension of his existence, beyond that, which exits, in order to discover, change or even to create himself. He tackled them, but also applied their measure to himself. The origins of a thus comprehended process of reading (i.e. as an experience or a trial) goes back to M. de Montaigne and his Essais – these affiliations too are followed in the article.

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