„Passionate desire for the ideal”. Marian Zdziechowski on the Czech Bayronists

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth century, the eminent Polish thinker, scholar, philosopher of culture, Marian Zdziechowski (1861–1938) published an extensive, two-volume work Byron and His Age. In this work, the author gathered his thoughts on the sources and forms of European pessimism, of which Byron’s work was a hallmark. European pessimism also anticipated the multiple and intrinsically complex undercurrent of nihilism. The rift between the ideal world and the real world, the experience of the disintegration of the foundations of Western civilisation and the messianic hopes for a universal (secular or religious) revival articulated themselves in many national cultures. Byron and His Age contains numerous remarks and observations by Marian Zdziechowski, as well as by other scholars, on the causes of such a widespread – encompassing large areas of Europe – crisis, and is an important contribution to the discussion, which has been going on for many years, on the genesis and course of decaying processes that can lead to civilisational collapse, but also to rebirth.