Redefinition of consciousness in the prose of the early Polish Modernism: Przybyszewski - Irzykowski

In my article I review some connections that joined aesthetic and psychological issues of Polish Modernism's prose and the dynamic development of some distinctively modern disciplines oi philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. These dense web of relationship caused a massive "turn inward” which infiluenced the whole culture of Modernism. Literature (as well as other arts) and science were concerned very much with the nature and structure of individual human consciousness, its relations to unconscious or subconscious levels of human mind. The problem of human consciousness was crucial for the foundations of Polish modern psychology and psychology since their institutional and professiona! organization took shape at the beginning of the 20th century. My main subject of interest is an intersection of the modern Polish prose and the psychological sciences in their approaches to answer the question "how it is to be conscious?”, I deal with two particular psychological and aesthetical projects ot Stanisław Przybyszewski and Karol Irzykowski. Both oi them advocated the re-definition ol human conscious experience in order to understand the hidden and unknown side of individual subjectivity. Both of them were very familiar with philosophical, psychological and medical discourses about normal and abnormal activities of mind. I also discuss how the new forms of their literary work (narrative techniques, construction of a literary character and their inner life) is connected with some new cultural and scientific concepts of mental phenomena, fluidity of thought and feelings, sensual perceptions. I point out the main differences between Przybyszewski and Irzykowski in order to show the more important aspects of the early Modernist discussions on human consciousness. The methodologicał level ot my article concerns some implications of interdisciplinary "consciousness studies” for literary researchers. I try to historicize the problem of consciousness as a crucial element oł Polish Modernists literary anthropology, but I give some reasons for adopting cognitive approaches to fictional narratives as well