THE EXPERIENCE of FAITH in SLAVIC CULTURES and LITERATURES in the CONTEXT of POSTSECULAR THOUGHT 2 Danuta Sosnowska Project2:Layout 2 2/16/19 1:38 PM Page 3
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EXPERIENCE_2_OK:Layout 1 1/23/19 10:16 AM Page 1 TH290E EXPERIENCDanutaE O SosnowskaF FAITH IN SLAVIC CULTURES AND LITERATURES IN THE CONTEXT OF POSTSECULAR THOUGHT Edited by Danuta Sosnowska Ewelina Drzewiecka Project2:Layout 2 2/16/19 1:38 PM Page 1 Introduction 1 THE EXPERIENCE OF FAITH IN SLAVIC CULTURES AND LITERATURES IN THE CONTEXT OF POSTSECULAR THOUGHT 2 Danuta Sosnowska Project2:Layout 2 2/16/19 1:38 PM Page 3 Introduction 3 THE EXPERIENCE OF FAITH IN SLAVIC CULTURES AND LITERATURES IN THE CONTEXT OF POSTSECULAR THOUGHT Edited by Danuta Sosnowska Ewelina Drzewiecka 4 Danuta Sosnowska Reviewers: Adam Lipszyc, Tadeusz Sławek Commissioning Editor: Maria Szewczyk Proofreading: Michael Timberlake, Aleksandra Zych Index of Names: Aleksandra Zych Index of Terms: Danuta Sosnowska, Ewelina Drzewiecka Cover Design: Zbigniew Karaszewski Illustration on the Cover: Maja Machulak Layout and Typesetting: Piotr Molski Publication as part of the task named International scientific conference “Experience of faith in Slavic cultures and literatures in the light of post-secular thinking” (task financed under the agreement No 695/P-DUN/2017 by the Minister of Science and Higher Education allocated to the science dissemination activities). Published in cooperation with the Slavic Foundation with financial support of the Slavic Foundation and the Faculty of Polish Studies, The University of Warsaw © Copyright by Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Warszawa 2018 ISBN 978-83-235-3717-5 (pdf online) ISBN 978-83-235-3725-0 (e-pub) ISBN 978-83-235-3733-5 (mobi) Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 00-497 Warszawa, ul. Nowy Świat 4 e-mail: [email protected] Księgarnia internetowa: www.wuw.pl 1st Edition, Warsaw 2018 Spis treści 5 Contents Danuta Sosnowska Introduction . 7 Ewelina Drzewiecka The Postsecular Point of View . 23 Michał Warchala Postsecularity: Theoretical Concept and Historical Experience . 40 Stanisław Obirek The Experience of Faith in a Postsecular Context . 50 Nonka Bogomilova Religion Today: ‘Public Decline’ in an ‘Anthropological Refuge’? . 65 Roman Kecˇka Postsecular or Post-Traditional? Slovakia between Tradition and Secularization . 83 Marta Zimniak-Hałajko Another Rationality. Spirituality, Conspiracy Theories and Social Engagement in Polish Rightist Social Movement Networks . 103 Jolanta Mindak-Zawadzka Bosniak Identity and the Bogomil Tradition: Medieval Dualist Heretics as Desirable Ancestors of Present-Day Post-Yugoslav Muslim Slavs. .116 Yuri Stoyanov Modern and Post-Secular Alevi and Bektāşī Religiosities and the Slavo-Turkic Heretical Imaginary . 128 6 Contents Ewelina Drzewiecka Reception of the Bible in Modern Bulgarian Culture: The (Post)Secular and the National . 144 Magdalena Maszkiewicz Unorthodox Experience of Faith in Ivan V. Lalić’s and Miodrag Pavlović’s Poetry: A Comparative Study. 165 Ivo Pospíšil The Secular, the Sacral, and the Three Stages of the Postsecular in Russian Literature: The Past and the Present . 177 Xavier Galmiche Metaphysical Yearning – A Czech Tradition . 188 Josef Vojvodík – Jan Wiendl “Priests in Prisons”: Religious Experience in Extreme Circumstances – The Theopoetics of Jan Zahradníček’s (1951–1960) Poems Written behind Bars . 197 Paula Kiczek Faith Beyond Doctrines – Faith in Dialogue: Reflection on the Philosophical Anthropology of Milan Machovec . 242 Danuta Sosnowska The Experience of Faith in Czech Literature after the Turn of 1989 on the Example of Angel by Jáchym Topol and Mefitis by Martin Komárek . 255 Bionotes . 268 Index of Names. 273 Index of Terms . 282 Introduction 7 Danuta Sosnowska Introduction To some extent, this book is a result of the conference which took place in October 2017 at the University of Warsaw under the title “The experience of faith in Slavic cultures and literatures in the context of postsecular thought.” The organizers intended to gather specialists from different Slavonic countries to discuss how religiosity is experienced today in areas that share Slavic tradi- tions. It was obvious that the meeting would only be a starting point for this discussion because conferences that undertake such a task (address the ques- tion from the standpoint of Slavonic experiences of faith) are still rare.1 Espe- cially taking into account that the meeting was not a debate between scholars conducting research in only one field, it aimed to confront various perspec- tives of religious studies, literary studies, social and political studies and, of course, fields like anthropology and philosophy. Indeed, it can be useful to introduce different points of view when modern belief or unbelief is examined. 1 However, Polish researchers conduct advanced research in areas such as literature and post- secularism. See, for example, Postsekularyzm i literatura, Wielogłos, no. 2 (2015). http://www. ejournals.eu/Wieloglos/2015/2-24-2015/; Piotr Bogalecki, Alina Mitek-Dziemba, and Tadeusz Sławek, eds., Więzi wspólnoty: literatura – religia – komparatystyka (Katowice: FA-art, 2013); Agnieszka Bielak, ed., Metamorfozy religijności w literaturze nowoczesnej (Lublin: KUL, 2016); Piotr Bogalecki, Szczęśliwe winy teolingwizmu. Polska poezja po roku 1968 w perspektywie post- sekularnej (Kraków: Universitas, 2016); Tomasz Garbol, ed., Literatura a religia – wyzwania postsekularności (Lublin: KUL, 2017). Cf. conferences, i.e.: “Więzi wspólnoty. Literatura – reli- gia – komparatystyka” [The Ties of Community. Literature, Religion, Comparative Studies] (Uni- versity of Silesia in Katowice, 2012), “Literatura a religia. Tradycja badawcza i jej reinterpretacje” [Literature and Religion. Research Tradition and its Reinterpretation] (The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, 2018). See also: Piotr Bogalecki and Alina Mitek-Dziemba, eds., Drzewo poznania. Postsekularyzm w przekładach i komentarzach (Katowice: FA-art, 2012). 8 Danuta Sosnowska We hope that this confrontation of different approaches to modern religious issues will also be fruitful in this book, which contains literary studies and social or philosophical diagnoses. In the editors’ opinion an interdisciplinary or – if one would like to be more critical – eclectic approach to the issue better reveals its complexity, diversity and richness than a one-dimensional explora- tion of the subject. Having considered that literature is not a mirror for any society, we treat it as a creative or expressive force in the process of emerging social imaginaries. By this literature, naming the hopes and fears of religious experiences completes or reveals – in its own way – the aspects of modern religiosity which can be observed in social processes or religious ideas today. Moreover, literature is capable of defining some experiences anew. During the aforementioned conference, not every Slavonic country was an object of scrutiny, but Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czechia, Macedonia, Slovakia, Serbia, Poland, Russia, Ukraine were considered. Similarly to the conference, this book presents experiences of faith in Slavonic countries and literatures only partially as some countries do not appear in the reflection pre- sented in the book. However, we treat this edition as encouragement to fur- ther discuss the issue – as we hope the debate will be continued. This is a task which is worth undertaking as today’s religiosity in Slavonic countries is not very well understood. In a recently released book, Michele Dillon wrote: Although the Church is universal, the everyday realities in any particular loca- tions give rise to a great deal of pluralism in how faith is practiced and understood. Each particular society’s setting presents its own nuances, complexities, and chal- lenges.2 In fact, religiosity in Slavic countries calls for scholars’ attention because its ‘nuances’ are not sufficiently known. Dillon, who anchored her research in the context of American Catholicism, mentioned that “[…] some tensions of which I write are also present in Western Europe, Australia and Latin America.”3 It is worth noting the exclusion of Eastern Europe from Dillon’s reflection, in par- ticular, Slavic countries. This is not a complaint against the author, but only a desire to emphasize that the religious situation in Slavic countries often re- mains out of sight of researchers, especially Western ones. Meanwhile, although the position of Slavic religions shares many factors with the situation of religion in the modern world, it has also some typical 2 Michele Dillon, Postsecular Catholicism. Relevance and Renewal (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 2018), 1–2. 3 Dillon, Postsecular Catholicism, 2. Introduction 9 traits resulting from the complex Slavic cultural heritage and history, includ- ing the communist past. Reflection on specific features of local religious -ex periences and examining this phenomenon in the context of global processes enriches knowledge of modernity and its relation to secularization and desec- ularization. The purpose of the book is to address today’s state of belief in Slavic countries, where religion was not only affected by the process of mod- ernization before World War II, but also where after the war the position of the Church was influenced by communist policy and religiosity was then con- fronted with the process of transformation. The authors of the texts collected in the book, some of whom took part in the conference and some of whom did not, look for different forms of spirit- uality and/or religiosity, thus proving how rich and often ambiguous the ma- terial they work on is. In this book, ‘postsecularism’ is an important