"The countenance of the earth" : the role of nature in the concept of culture by Jan Gwalbert Pawlikowski

Streszcz. ang.

The article is an attempt to reconstruct the original concept of culture formulated by Jan Gwalbert Pawlikowski in his treatise "Culture and Nature" of 1913. Pawlikowski, whose whole life was connected with nature - he kept a famous garden in Medyka near Przemyśl, he was a lover and defender of the Tatra wildlife, an outstanding mountaineer, expert theoretician and practitioner of agriculture - in his treatise made nature a significant part of culture. He was convinced that culture is a process of harmonious coexistence and interaction of unconscious forces of nature and forms of artistic expression, which are a manifestation of individual predispositions of a conscious artist. Formulating that view, he referred to romantic concepts (by W. Schlegel and F. Schiller, among others) but at the same time he introduced new elements. In his struggle for a new face of culture, he changed the romantic spirit of the earth and human soul united with nature to a more superficial but concrete "countenance of the earth". For Pawlikowski, the best example of artistic work remaining in harmony with nature and stemming from concern for a concrete "countenance" of the Podhale region was the work of Stanisław Witkiewicz and the Zakopane Style in architecture which he had originated. From today's perspective Pawlikowski's ideas in many aspects appear to be a pioneering forecast of eco-critical approaches of the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries.