Reality sense

Author Rafał Łętocha

Founded by him in 1935, “Easy from the Bridge” intended to be a kind of counterweight to liberal “Literary News”, wielding to any point a government of souls among Polish intelligence. Piasecki's ambition was to challenge the hegemonist position of this periodical on the marketplace of cultural press in the Second Republic. This was to any degree successful, given that the “Simple from the Bridge” was almost equal to the publication of a magazine edited by Grydzewski, reaching 15,000 copies, and that the magazine itself was not 1 of many national periodicals on the press market, but it became something of a cultural institution.

Karol Zbyszewski pointed out that Piasecki “was the soul of the full weekly. In 4 years, neither a number came out without it. He didn't leave for more than a couple of days, he didn't let himself to be sicker. What is the first condition to be a good editor? Seat in place! The editor must be in the editorial board, like a store clerk or an office clerk. There are hundreds of tiny things only the editor-in-chief can do. Piasecki had this “sitzfleisch”. He was sitting in his office like a moth. There was no telephone, hours and days, all over Warsaw...”

The readers of the consecutive from the Bridge were young people. Piasecki wanted to make a grandstand from writing, on which the views of the generation from 20 to thirty-five years could clash. This was a generation that had a very definite thought attitude, or alternatively 2 opposing attitudes: national and Marxist. Piasecki noticed rather early that, despite the differences in the planet view, young people besides have a lot in common. The letter was intended to uncover this community.

Wojciech Wasiutyński so mentioned that Piasecki originally abandoned the networks very widely.


In fact, in the first period the writing was in a good liberal sense – the texts of authors with different views were published in his writings, not limited to persons associated with the organization or the thought of the national camp.

Of course, articles by the publicists associated with him were: Jan Bajkowski, Jan Bielatowicz, Adam Doboszyński, Tadeusz Dworak, Karol Stefan Frycz, Jan Korolc, Jan Mosdorf, Stefan Niebudek, Witold Nowosad, Władysław Pietrzak, Marian Reutt, Wasiutyński, Jerzy Zdzechowski.

However, we besides find in the periodical besides the publications of conservatives specified as Julian Babinski, Leszek and Miłosz Gembarzewski, Kazimierz Marian Morawski and Ksawery Pruszyński, neopogan with Stanisław Śukalski and Jan Stachniuk at the head of, saws and Wroński specified as Jerzy Braun and Mirosław Starost, as well as many another celebrated then or later publicists, writers and scientists, from communists and socialists to Catholics and conservatives, specified as Józef Czapski, Witold Gombrowczyk, Leon Kruczkowski, Stanisław Młodożec, Fr.Innocenty Maria Bocheński, Ignacy Chrzanowski, Ferdinand Goetel, Konrad Górski, Roman InGarden, Karol Irzykowski, Stefan Kołaczkowski, Karol Ludwięk Koninski, Zofia Kosak, Jalu Kurek, Fr. Konstanty Michalski, Jan Jerzy Turomuński, Jerzy Morcinek, Kazimierz, Stanisław Woński, Śróbowski, Stanisław Wróbowski, Stanisław Wróbowski. Despite the fact that the majority of permanent publicists and editors with Stanisław Piasecki were at the head of their relation with the young generation of nationalists, and the writing had a clear ideological profile, we have been dealing with quite a few openness to authors with different views from the beginning.

Culture, fool

As a publicist and ideologist Piasecki, he devoted his seat to cultural matters. Culture should, according to it, affect national life and grow out of it, including sui generissystem of connected vessels. Norwid wrote in Promethidion about the artist as an organizer of the national psyche, Piasecki besides viewed the function and tasks of the cultural elite in a akin way.

He so criticized the separation of creativity, literature from life, social soil, national, worship of play with form, word, art for art. Reviewing Leopold Staff's book of poetry, he wrote with remorse that "life is simply a powerful epic, it is tensed in drama and tragedy – and poesy was inactive lyrical about flowers and birds, about spring and pine, about acacias and holidays."

In his opinion, there are immense tasks ahead of art. It is only erstwhile “real art, erstwhile society is needed, erstwhile it is able to walk with time and empathize with its spirit, and it does not drag itself in the tail.” He did not hesitate to talk of poetry, literature needed and unnecessary, despite the fact that this would bring about charges of utilitarianism or their instrumentalisation. Discussing John Nepomucen Miller's book On the Ruins of Grenada, he wrote that it should be “a deed, not just a beauty of the spirit”. For this to be possible, however, the creator must have a connection with real life, average people, not to stick to the circles of common adoration and limit his contacts to the alleged artistic bohemian. It must permeate social and national life, form it, change it, refine it, enrich it.


One of the key concepts appearing in Piasecki's publications is the word "creation". It does not mention only to the sphere connected with art or culture in a narrower sense of the word, due to the fact that all action of a man should have the character of creation.

The core of the criticism of capitalism, which we find in Piasecki's publications, is, for example, the belief that he was liable for the creative expression of man. He so stated that the top sin of the capitalist strategy was not material exploitation, but "the crime of spiritual impoverishment of man." Creation is the essence of humanity, depriving people of the anticipation of creative action, so for Piasecki it is an expression of dehumanization, reification of man, degradation to an animal level.


Culture and Work

The cure for these deficiencies, like many nationalists or conservatives at that time, will see Piasecki in the deconcentration of production. However, it does not escape in any kind of mediocrity, primitiveism or humanism, standing in the position that the further improvement of technology will contribute to the anticipation of removing the large-capitalist strategy and introducing economical deconcentration.

He stressed that economical life, technology and culture are closely linked, method advancement is, after all, a kid of imagination and culture. “Without a communicative about a flying carpet,” wrote the editor «Easy from the Bridge», there would be no aeroplan present due to the fact that there would be no thought of an aeroplan. [...] It seems to me that the unknown storyteller about the flying carpet is no little admirable than the Bleriot and Wright brothers, if not more”. The real father of modern technology, according to Piasecki, is not Edison or another large scientist or inventor, but Julius Verne. Norwid, mentioned earlier in the epilogue Promethidion, stated that 1 of the main causes of the tragedy of Polish culture is the gap between “the word of the people and the word written and learned” and that “no society will stand, and no nation will sustain, as through the work of the conventional harmony connected the word of the people and the word of society in 2 sides decoupled”. He so called for broken ties, wrote about art as "a relief of work," due to the fact that "even the most material things taking – these inventions that man does, besides satellites of art are—or at least sources of inventions without any doubt."

Piasecki, as we can see, points out in rule the same thing, speaks of the request for a certain rooting of culture and circumstantial national solidarity, socializing it and direct entering into the blood circulation. However, this does not mean that he demands that literature be transformed into something like agitprop. On the contrary, he refrained from ideas of instrumentalizing literature for strictly political purposes, i.e. making it a propaganda tube of a peculiar party. The evaluation of the book's value, as he wrote, cannot depend on the degree to which the author could "satisfaction with political group ambitions, but on how far he could blend his ideal, spiritual and national viewpoint organically into the material of the novel."


Towards Cultural Imperialism

When discussing cultural issues, However, Piasecki postulated first of all her dynamization, demanding that it be incorporated into the world's processing work, and not simply contemplated it passively. He demanded that the Polish psyche be moved from defensive to offensive. In his opinion, defensive elements begin to flow to the surface and dominate in the 16th and 17th centuries, which was expected to be the main reason for Poland's failure of meaning, the power position and yet the full fall of the Polish state.


This process was to take on dynamics in the years of partitions, erstwhile the revival of national feelings in Europe found Poland divided by the partitioners, which had to put on the defensive character of Polish patriotism. Piasecki emphasized: “Our national songs are about the word “no”: “Poland has not died yet”, “I will not abandon the land from where our household belongs”. [...] In fact, even the notion of “freedom” we preferred to formulate negatively: “independence”. Polish poesy and Polish song, reflecting faithfully the kind of our national sensitivity, are tuned to a note of defence and sacrifice. [...] But due to the fact that the defence was besides the chief commandment of Poland during our years of political captivity. Defence of faith, defence of language, defence of customs, defence of nationality".

O fresh Nationalism

So we request to find a fresh idea, make a fresh dynamic culture, a civilization center. “The nation truly worthy of this name – Piasecki wrote – is the hub of the thought of civilization, the thought of social reconstruction, the thought of universality. Believing in specified an idea, believing in a mission that is to be accomplished in the world, believing in the necessity to get believers – creates the greatness of the nation and gives it a moral attitude towards others."

It is clear that not only in terms of national interest, but besides in terms of a national mission, whose appropriate implementation, however, is to service this interest well. It can be said of any Messianic elements or rather, utilizing the terminology of Nicholas Bierdiaev, missionary. For the Russian philosopher, missionaryism is simply a kind of secularized messianism in which there are no sui generis spiritual impulses, giving the mission a soteriological dimension, or entering it in a millenaristical strategy of salvation. It doesn't should be about any national megalomania.


José Ortega y Gasset wrote about 2 basic types of human

– any are demanding themselves, taking on responsibilities and putting themselves in danger,

Others, on the another hand, presume that surviving means surviving as they are, without taking any challenge or effort to self-improve.

Similarly, the Polish mission will be understood by Piasecki, primarily as a commitment, a burden, a task. He besides pointed to the existence of 2 types of nationalism. The first of them changed national relations through colonization, reparation of national minorities, or physical extermination. Nationalism of the fresh kind solved them by creating an inclusive idea, aiming at integrating neighbouring nationalities and building a fresh civilization through this process.

Poland, due to its geopolitical position, cannot follow only defensive ideas.

Pushing between 2 aggressive empires causes Piasecki to make his own imperialism. Tertium non-datur, it seems Piasecki, or it will come to this, or Poland will be crushed by 2 empires aiming inevitably to confront.

Summary

Piasecki, as we can see, placed emphasis on pre-political or metapolitical issues, recognising that the condition of sine qua non the growth of the political importance of Poland, the preservation of independent existence by Poland – as he stated, given the geopolitical situation, is possible only in the situation of gaining a power position – are transformations in the sphere of culture. He said nothing less, no more, that this culture should be thoroughly processed, it is essential to catch up in this area, we must yet win a conflict for it, then it will only be possible to dream of changes in another spheres, without this basis, a hard foundation for any attempts at improvement will actually be building on sand.


Using Marxist language, he pointed to the primacy of superstructure over the base, to which Antonio Gramsci or the Frankfurters at the time will begin to draw attention, and what later with specified a force he will lift up the alleged fresh right, emphasising first and foremost on the fight for cultural hegemony, those values which, though not straight related to immediate political issues, but have a serious impact on them. This goal was to be served by the “Simple from the Bridge”.

Constatations and ideas of this kind were not isolated. During the years of the occupation, the creators associated with the writing “Art and Nation”, following the Piasecki trail, will blame the September defeat on the Polish cultural and creative layers which, in their opinion, isolated themselves from society in the ivory tower, without having any ambition to influence reality, alienating themselves from real life and treating culture in terms of humor and whim. They so postulated the attitude of cultural imperialism.

Similar accounts will besides be found in Jerzy Braun writing about the departure of the intellectual layer from the historical issues of the nation in the interwar twentieth anniversary, about the fact that art has become the fun of an elite that did not want to make a national, social culture, to take work for its own affairs of the nation and the state, fleeing in “aesthetism, talent and freedom”. Hence, the postulates of the creation of the "new planet of culture" or the "culture of tomorrow" which are presented in him both in the interwar years and with a doubled force during the occupation.