Published: 2025-12-15

Gwelfizm jako mit fundacyjny dla Polski. W sprawie Czerwonych tarcz Jarosława Iwaszkiewicza

Robert Pawlik
Cultural Studies Appendix
Section: Artykuły
https://doi.org/10.21697/zk.2025.12.22

Abstract

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s Czerwone tarcze (eng. Red Shields) has been interpreted from various perspectives: historical, historiosophical, mythological, as well as psychological ones. In this paper, I propose to perceive the novel primarily as a work about the state, in which the author juxtaposes the Piast Poland with three political traditions characteristic of the twelfth century: Ghibellinismc(the pro-imperial faction), Guelfism (the anti-imperial, pro-papal faction), and the re-emerging republican thought. I also draw attention to the autobiographical dimension of the novel, which constitutes a kind of transposition of the author’s personal encounter with German aspirations to cultural hegemony in Europe. Finally, I attempt to demonstrate that, by opposing the German myth of “mystical Ghibellinism,” Iwaszkiewicz created his own myth of Guelphic Poland—rejecting membership in the universalist German Empire in favor of participation in a different form of universalism, namely Christianitas, a community of Christian peoples preserving their republican distinctiveness.

Keywords:

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Stefan George, Red Shields, Ghibellinism, Guelphism, political myth

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Pawlik, R. (2025). Gwelfizm jako mit fundacyjny dla Polski. W sprawie Czerwonych tarcz Jarosława Iwaszkiewicza . Cultural Studies Appendix, (12), 423–451. https://doi.org/10.21697/zk.2025.12.22

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