Il 1918 polacco: periodizzazione, miti, paradossi e paradigmi storici

1918 in Poland: periodization, myths, paradoxes and historical paradigms This essay addresses issues of periodization and longue durée, with a specific focus on the importance (or overvaluation) of the reconstruction of the Polish State, and its effects and consequences on contemporary Polish culture and literature. 1918 was perceived as a turning point and as an ideal boundary between an old and a new era. It is one of those crucial historical events, both in domestic and in international Polish politics, that mobilized different and antagonistic “collective memories” and “politics of memory”. Nevertheless, the Author’s thesis is that just before and immediately after 1918, Polish culture simultaneously emphasized the concepts of “beginning” and “end” (Ju. Lotman), whereas its manifest “literaturocentrism” – caused by the previous absence of stable institutions and geo-cultural dislocation extra fines – caused literature to be perhaps the main arena of disputes and the common ground for ideas and visions that went far beyond the “literary” and “literariness”. This view, therefore, reinforces the idea that the “romantic paradigm” (M. Janion) persisted for about two centuries. Much like the notion that Modernism began before the end of the 19th century (K. Wyka, W. Bolecki, R. Nycz etc.), this paradigm stresses the great complexity of Polish historical-cultural and historical-literary (but also socio-political) landscape around 1918. Yet this conception does not undermine the symbolic significance of the year of the rebirth of the state as a “magical moment” for Poland.