Nations

The contemporary Polish national identity was born as a duality. It is illustrated, symbolically, by the kidnapping of the king by the Bar Confederation. In this moment two separate visions of state and nation were born. J.J. Rousseau saw in the actions of the confederates an element of anarchic, natural freedom, and republican self-determination. The Confederation fiasco became the founding myth of Polish national uprisings. It was then that Polish patriotism started to be identified with Catholicism, and modernity with trauma. The Print Room contains many designs for the reconstruction of Warsaw in accordance with the spirit of the Enlightenment. Alongside other modernisation ideas, these can be perceived as constantly recurring attempts to overcome nature and give it form. The series of unbuilt monuments that were to pay tribute to Stanisław August can be interpreted as a traumatic symbol of the rejection of the Enlightenment tradition.

A clash between two nations entails a schizophrenic split; synthesis, as was the case with the Constitution of 3 of May and Tadeusz Kościuszko, happens more rarely. The purpose of the 18th century modernisation was to give a modern form to aristocratic Sarmatism, and to transplant the ideas of the Western Enlightenment to Poland. The vacillation between schizophrenia and synthesis shapes the Polish public sphere even today; and because of this divide, it is impossible to make plans for the future.