Człowiek w obliczu sytuacji granicznej

O doświadczeniach niewoli jenieckiej w życiu i twórczości Mieczysława Wallisa

Abstract

The article presents the intellectual biography of Mieczysław Wallis in the light of his several years of experience as a prisoner of war. During World War II, the philosopher was sentenced to the German POW camp in Woldenberg, where he lived for several years. Wallis’ assessment of his stay in the POW camp is presented primarily in the text entitled The Psyche of a Prisoner of War, in which the philosopher describes the psychological threat– “barbed wire disease”, from which POWs often suffered. Importantly, Wallis himself did not succumb to the camp’s atmosphere of anxiety and did not mentally lose himself in danger of long-term captivity. His existential power was drawn primarily from the world of his own interior ‒turning to the sphere of values and experiences of an aesthetic nature. It was in the world of aesthetic experiences that Wallis found a refuge for human subjectivity, autonomy, freedom, and dignity. He was convinced that aesthetic experiences are a source of a special kind of joy that can balance suffering in human life.