Roman Ingarden’s Spaces of the Word. Part 2

Abstract

The article delves into the literary oeuvre of Roman Ingarden, the prominent Polish phenomenologist, philosopher, aesthetician and literary theorist. While his scholarly contributions are globally acknowledged, his literary output, in stark contrast, remains largely undiscovered, archived within the confines of his family collection, with only sporadic references in dispersed texts. Intriguingly, some portions of his literary creations were purportedly prepared for publication by the author himself. This corpus of work, primarily comprising poetry but also prose, drama and autobiographical writings, unveils not only Ingarden’s artistic predilections – ranging from thematic and stylistic inclinations to genre preferences and rhythmic patterns, exhibiting clear affiliations with Young Poland’s poetry – but also provides insight into the implicit conception of subjectivity embedded in his poetic compositions. This nuanced understanding significantly supplements and reinforces the overtly articulated notion of subjectivity present in his writings addressing Edmund Husserl’s philosophy. Additionally, Ingarden’s poetic works, when juxtaposed with the poetry of his contemporaries – such as Kazimierz Twardowski, Stefania Skwarczyńska, Maria Dłuska, Roman Jakobson and Victor Shklovsky – assumes a pivotal role as an artifact, offering a lens through which to comprehend the prevailing cultural milieu of the epoch. Simultaneously, it provokes the question of why outstanding innovators in literary studies exhibited an intriguing conservatism in their own literary endeavours.