‘Tragedy’/‘pathos’/‘drama’ in Walery Gostomski’s critical discourse

The present article analyses selected critical texts by Walery Gostomski, in which the terms ‘tragedy’/‘pathos’/‘drama’ are used in order to refer to the most significant, according to Gostomski, authors of ethical projects i.e. Friedrich Nietzsche and Leo Tolstoy. The abovementioned terms are employed by the critic according to the rules of the epoch, which means they are used interchangeably and therefore their ambivalence is attested. The abuse of the synonyms of ‘tragedy’, which both emphasizes its value and at the same time downgrades it, led to the aforementioned ambivalence. The contradictions in Nietzsche and Tolstoy’s thoughts shown in Gostomski’s texts prove for the critic the crisis of contemporary culture and destabilization of its components. References to ‘tragedy’/ ‘pathos’/‘drama’ on the one hand help to illustrate conceptual and axiological chaos and on the other, they stand as counterbalance to it, as they recall the criteria of world order as well as of verifying the quality of human experience all vested in the tradition