Idea dialogu międzykulturowego a europejsko-afrykańskie doświadczenia Mirosława Żuławskiego

Abstract

The idea of an intercultural dialogue and European-African experiences of Miroslaw Żuławski is an attempt to analyse the core values of both Europe and Africa made by Miroslaw Żuławski, hence the discussion of the confrontation between the European and African cultures resulting from the crisis of the Old Continent values – the direct consequence of both of the World wars. The beginning contains the discussion of the 20th century events which seemed to have destroyed (annihilated) man’s belief in the human right to self-determination, in rationality and humanism of people’s behaviours and, finally, the belief in the ordinary human goodness. In quest for his own identity Mirosław Żuławski – a flâneur – goes to the Dark Continent, where he experiences not only the primeval beauty of the world but also, once again, the atrocities of war. The conclusion of my deliberations is the reflection that through difference and dissimilarity of the African culture, the writer underwent the cyclic (periodical) journey into the inside of himself and his native Dobromil. The broad anthropological-philosophical-literary context of the intercultural dialogue that Mirosław Żuławski participated in, was realized in the idea of “detour” to the own cultural identity, in accordance with Eliade’s conception that “he who reveals the sense of our mysterious journey to us, must himself be a stranger, a person of different faith and different race”.