Irony and nihilism. The librarian figure in An Audience with Lucypher by Józef Sękowski

The subject matter of the present article is the image of library and librarian in a forgotten short story by a Polish-Russian writer Józef Julian Sękowski (1800−1858). Sękowski is known in Polish literature as a multi-talented orientalist and polyglot, who changed his national identity in 1832 and began to write only in Russian. In the history of Russian literature he is famous for Library for Reading and Fantastic Voyages of Baron Brambeus, an ironic-grotesque work, which was precursory in Russian prose. Until 1832 Sękowski was, however, a Polish writer. His last significant work was An Audience with Lucypher published in a Polish magazine Bałamut Petersburski (Petersburgian Philanderer) in 1832 and immediately translated into Russian by Sękowski himself under the title Bolszoj wychod u Satany (1833). The library and librarian presented by the author in this piece are a caricature illustration proving his nihilistic worldview. Sękowski is a master of irony and grotesquery, yet the world he creates is deprived of freedom and justice and a book in this world is merely a threat to absolute power