Résumé 0

This book is dedicated to interpreting the private writings of S. Brzozowski, K. L. Koniński and H. Elzenberg, as well as the religious ideology of the authors featured in those texts, in a wider context of Polish intimism and (especially) the French thoughts on the private diary as a literary genre. The work reveals a deep connection between understanding/constructing of one’s own identity in diaries and the original philosophy of religion/theology of selected thinkers. Its individual theses are founded on the study of the form that a private genre constitutes, as well as its meanings, based not only in ideas related to cultural studies, but also to anthropology, sociology or psychoanalysis. In endeavouring to capture the writers’ outlooks on religion (a very intimate one, connected to their entire lives, and not merely to their theoretical musings, as the author of the book suggests), the author uses the category of the ‘I’of the private diary in her work. This is understood not as an ‘I’ systematised within the diary, but above all as the implied ‘I’ of the text. This scholarly perspective allows the author to arrive at several interesting theses on the topic of the role of the diary in the lives of these authors, and to analyse their understanding of religion from this angle. The author also situates them in the wider context of Polish culture, demonstrating at the same time the originality of the religious reflection of selected authors, and their relationship to Polish tradition of keeping private diaries. (Dr hab. Anna Kurska)