Between the act of consciousness and the act of speech. Stream of consciousness technique as a metaphor of art

The subject of the article is an aesthetic experience in literary arts illustrated with the example of stream of consciousness used in poetic prose by Julian Przyboś in his cycle of poetry entitled Pióro z ognia (A Feather Made of Fire, 1937). There are several kinds of the stream of consciousness technique, but the most interesting one is a direct written record of a character's thought process which usually takes the form of an interior monologue. Such record of the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind cannot by treated as a speech act because of the lack of an apparent organized form and because of the fact that the "speaker" is not addressing an audience or a third person. However this equivalent of thoughts can be treated in an aesthetic manner, on a special meta-level which is possible in aesthetic communication. Therefore, the following questions arise: is it possible to take someone’s own stream of consciousness as a subject of that kind of aesthetic experience and then to treat everything forming part of consciousness as inspiration for certain aesthetic interest? Could it be similar to ‘progressive universal poetry’ described by Friedrich Schlegel? Could a well-known definition of aesthetic experience by Stanisław Ossowski be a proper description of such attitude? In Ossowski 's concept, the most important features of aesthetic experience are as follows: separating from our scientific interests and practical concerns, a certain ‘disinterested’ attitude and a play which allows different perception of time i.e. ‘living in the moment’. If we adopt that approach to the modern stream of consciousness technique it may transpire that the most important aspect of any aesthetic experience is not a certain feature of a given piece of art but a certain activity of consciousness which assumes a particular position to itself and finds pleasure in the feeling of its own power and activity