Telegony - nature’s miracle or mystyfication? : deliberations based on selected literary examples

Streszcz. po ang.

The author proposes the reading of literary works, a novel Elective Affinities by Goethe and a drama The Lady from the Sea by Ibsen, focusing on the theme of telegony which is dominant in them. Telegony is an unexplained phenomenon of a powerful interpersonal interaction known since antiquity and popular in folk beliefs as well as present in modernist philosophical reflection. An affective experience resulting from direct interpersonal confrontations sometimes causes a perceptible outcome - for example it determines the physical resemblance of two related people. Exactly those cases, from time to time called "fixations" or "infections", turned out to be an inspiration for the authors to create the discussed works. The following article is an attempt at offering a critical reading of these works and consider the phenomenon in a wider philosophical, anthropological, psychological as well as sociological context of the modernity.