“Justifying description” in Zygmunt Haupt’s works

Abstract

This article discusses the problem of description in the works of Zygmunt Haupt in the wider context of the contemporary “descriptive turn” in literary studies. First, early critical readings and reviews of Haupt’s exceptional descriptions, which the writer included in his stories even though he acknowledged a crisis of mimesis in literature, are discussed. Indeed, Haupt made a conscious effort to “justify description,” which played an important role in his works, as Jerzy Stempowski noticed, either as part of a comprehensive vision of the outside world with tentatively invokes philosophical justifications or in moments during which Haupt’s characters come into contact with reality in and through accidental openings or “windows.” The article discusses these two respective methods of justifying description, drawing on speculative realism as well as the philosophy of Kazimierz Twardowski, which inspires the contemporary advocates of new philosophical realisms.