Stanisław Brzozowski, *Flames*. Vol. I–II [1908]

Title: Flames: From the Papers of Michał Kaniowski. Volumes I–II in 1 vol.

Author: Stanisław Brzozowski (1878–1911) [philosopher, literary critic, novelist, and journalist; one of the most outstanding and influential thinkers of Polish modernism].

Publisher: Lviv, published by Bernard Połoniecki’s Księgarnia Polska.

Year of publication: 1908.

Format: 19 cm.

Volume: [2], 324; 366 pp.

Binding: Original period half-leather binding.

This is the first edition of *Płomienie* (*Flames*), Stanisław Brzozowski’s most important novel, often referred to as the first Polish intellectual novel. The work was conceived as a polemical response to Dostoevsky’s *The Demons*. It takes the form of notes left behind by the protagonist, Michał Kaniowski, a young Polish nobleman who, out of rebellion against injustice, becomes involved in the Russian revolutionary movement of the 1870s and 1880s. Kaniowski’s story takes the reader through the student and conspiratorial circles of Russia, the émigré community, and Paris, and his journey becomes a record of the spiritual and ideological struggles of an entire generation. Brzozowski does not impose a single viewpoint on the reader. In the novel, the voices of traditionalists, conservatives, Catholics, and radical revolutionaries clash, often without a decisive commentary from the author. Questions about Polish identity, the meaning of history, individual responsibility, and the crisis of values have made *Płomienie* a formative read for successive generations of Polish intellectuals. Among the heirs to this intellectual tradition were Czesław Miłosz, Leszek Kołakowski, and Father Józef Tischner.

The novel was published in two volumes in Lviv by Bernard Połoniecki’s Księgarnia Polska, one of the most important publishers of modernist literature in Galicia. The year of publication coincided with the most difficult period in the author’s life. In 1908, he was accused of collaborating with the Tsarist Okhrana, which sparked a fierce controversy among the Polish intelligentsia. The writer himself defended himself against this accusation for the rest of his life.

Stanisław Leopold Brzozowski was born in 1878 in Maziarna in the Lublin region. He studied in Warsaw, from where he was expelled for his involvement in the student movement. He was imprisoned by the Russian authorities and became involved with left-wing independence circles. He developed an original “philosophy of work” that combined Marxist, Nietzschean, and Catholic influences. In his widely discussed *Legend of Young Poland* (1910), he sharply criticized the culture of modernism. Suffering from tuberculosis, he lived in Italy from 1906 onward, where he drew closer to Catholicism toward the end of his life. He died in Florence in 1911, at the age of only 32. His “Diary” was published posthumously.

Provenance: a clean piece, free of ownership marks and stamps.

This is the first edition of one of the key novels of Polish modernism, complete in both volumes, in its original period half-leather binding. A must-have for collectors of first editions of Polish literature, scholars of Brzozowski’s thought, and enthusiasts of Young Poland prose.

Clean piece. Period half-leather binding.

Catalog ID: 13075-19-A-Z-Q