A Few Thoughts on Jan Blonski

The work of Jan Blonski, Poland's most prominent critic of the second half of the twentieth century, has hitherto been presented from a static or synchronic perspective. Dybciak presents the diachronic dimension of Blonski's literary critical contributions. A particularly fruitful approach to understanding Blonski's critical output is to reconstruct the transformations that his philosophical and religious views underwent in the years 1950-2000. Dybciak observes an evolution from the Marxist ideology imposed by the Stalinist administration, through a period of a syncretic world view, towards a Christian personalism and the development of Blonski's original interpretive method, which focuses on the sacral elements of literary works and the elaboration of a unique writing style that represents a valuable contribution to the essay genre.