The January Rising of 1863

The January Rising was a breakthrough for nineteenth-century Poland. For Prus and his peers, it was a traumatic event that shaped their entrance into maturity.

Spiritism

The popularity of spiritism at the time of Prus was closely related to the notion of scientific and empirical approach to knowledge. For the writer, it was an attempt to reconcile the material and the spiritual.

Prus, Science and Religion

For Prus and other positivists, scientific cognition was the most important category in our knowledge about the world. At the same time, they did not automatically reject religion and existing morality. The clash between science and religion is a central motif in Prus’s works.

Aleksander Głowacki

We all know that Bolesław Prus is Aleksander Głowacki’s penname. But were Prus and Głowacki truly one and the same person?

Art in the Times of Prus

Erected in the days of Prus, the building of today’s Zachęta National Art Gallery (in the nineteenth-century, Towarzystwo Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych; Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts) held the most important exhibitions of Polish art, which were critically reported and commented on by the writer.

Prus and Sienkiewicz

The two greatest writers of the late nineteenth-century existed in Polish culture in two completely different ways, which were not always of their own choosing.