my IWP
Brilliant Minds
Posted: Wednesday, June 8, 2005
When I resolved to write about Polish contributions to the intellectual heritage of humanity, I imagined the skeptics rolling their eyes expecting yet another futile exercise of “The Elephant and the Polish Question” genre. What does one’s origin have to do with one’s creativity? The answer is, well, quite a bit but on many unexpected levels, individual and collective.
To his Polish admirers, Fryderyk Szopen (Frederic Chopin) is a Polish genius, with Polish concerns reverberating through his music. Hence, for instance, the argument goes, the fiery “Revolutionary Etude” reflects the composer’s preoccupation with the November Rising of 1830 against Russia. At least some of Chopin’s foreign fans disagree, however. For example, the eminent Anglo-Welsh historian of Poland, Norman Davies, has noted tongue-in-cheek that a Jamaican can easily relate to the Jamaican in Chopin. Both sides have a point. The latter correctly stresses the universal dimension of a genius who can touch one’s soul, heart, and mind, his ethnic and social background notwithstanding. The former also rightly points out the native source of inspiration of a brilliant mind drawing on his Polish roots. For the compatriots of a genius that is a crucial, if not all defining, element in his work: a particularly Polish brand of creativity.
Nonetheless, in reality, the particular and the universal elements complement each other in the endeavors of a genius. They enrich one another. In fact, arguably, the particular element can, and often does, provide a special flavor of the universally acclaimed masterpiece. Therefore, after all, it is pertinent to inquire about the roots of a brilliant mind to discern if, and to what extent, his universally recognized achievements have been influenced by his origin, upbringing, and native passions. This inquiry will concentrate on all types of intellectual pursuits, and not only artistic ones, picked randomly throughout Poland’s history. Some of these contributions reinforced already existing trends in Western Civilization and, thus, became subsumed into it without being duly noted as specifically Polish. Other contributions developed autonomously, prematurely, and, thus, quietly passed into oblivion without any credit to their Polish authors. The result is that Polish intellectual contributions to humanity are the world’s best kept secret.
I shall now sketch the general cultural, political, and scientific trends and mention mostly these individuals who are known in the West or who, while usually remaining obscure, enriched Western heritage with their universal contributions.
Sometime after the Polish state took shape over a thousand years ago, waxing in strength and size, brilliant minds pondered the ways best to arrange the nation’s affairs internally and externally. Arguably, Polish legal and political thought ascended its most sublime level when the nation achieved the zenith of its power and influence between the 15th and 17th century. In other words, the might of Poland reflected itself also in the originality of its statesmen and scholars. However, despite strenuous efforts of Wenceslas Wagner, few people know about Poland’s contributions to Western legal and political thought notwithstanding that the Poles followed Western paths to freedom and, sometimes, even explored them before anyone else.
In 1228, the Duke Ladislas (Władysław III) granted his lay and ecclesiastical lords the right of consultation in the government.
The so-called Act of Cienia originated in conditions similar to those that had forced the English monarch to grant his peers the Magna Carta in 1215. Despite obvious similarities, the latter act is still celebrated as a major watershed of universal liberty; the former naturally lingers in complete obscurity. And so does the Codification of the Polish Common Law under King Casimir the Great (Kazimierz Wielki) in 1347, which was mos
