Stanisław Brzozowski

Stanisław Brzozowski (born June 28, 1878, Maziarnia, Russian Empire [now in Poland]—died April 30, 1911, Florence, Italy) was a Polish critic and novelist who is considered a major force in shaping the idiom of 20th-century Polish literature.

Brzozowski was educated in Lublin and Warsaw, where he enrolled in university studies. He was arrested by the Russian authorities for political activities and briefly incarcerated in a high-security prison. Afterward some members of the left-wing opposition accused him of compromising his coconspirators and said that he was being blackmailed by the Russian secret police. He had many supporters, among the intelligentsia in general and writers in particular, who denounced his accusers. In prison he had contracted tuberculosis, and even a cure in Italy could not help him. He died at age 33.

Płomienie (1908; “Flames”), considered Brzozowski’s first mature novel, is a fictional account of the Russian revolutionary movements connected with the secret organization Zemlya i Volya (“Land and Freedom”). The novel Sam wśród ludzi (1911; “Alone Among Men”) is the first volume of what was intended to be a series of examinations of “the philosophical and political transformation of European consciousness.” Brzozowski started another novel that was incomplete at his death. His other novels include Pod ciężarem Boga (“Under the Weight of God”), written in 1901 but not published until 2012, and Wiry (“The Whirls”), published beginning in 1904 but not finished.

Brzozowski’s philosophy was a complex synthesis of philosophical and literary influences, including Romanticism, Marxism, and Roman Catholic modernism. His major philosophical achievement was his so-called philosophy of work, his belief that the foundation of freedom lies in the power of human hands over nature. He used this thesis in his incisive analyses of the connections between culture and society, perhaps best noted in his critical work Legenda Młodej Polski (1910; “The Legend of Young Poland”).