“Promethidion” by Cyprian Norwid and “Letter to artists” by John Paul II or reflections on true beauty

Abstract

Two voices of Polish thinkers and poets on true beauty – “Promethidion” by Cyprian Norwid and “Letter to artists” by John Paul II – are related to each other in the thought on the soteriological character of beauty which triumphantly leads the man beyond his poverty and the perspective of a fall. Both texts were written despite the dominating philosophical currents of their times. Norwid denied hedonism and fuctionalism, and John Paul II’s message from Letter to artists remains in principal intellectual opposition to the ‘culture of death’ and postmodern esthetical relativity. Norwid’s thought about beauty is also placed in opposition to promoted by the 20th-century avant-garde and taken over by postmodernism category of ‘originality’. The place of the significant for modernity subjectivism and esthetical relativism is taken over by ‘esthetical personalism’ in the works of the recluse from Paris.