“Bisogna essere volpe e leone” – censorship and reception interference in the writing process of Bożyca by Bronisław Trentowski

Abstract

Bronisław Trentowski, one of the leading Polish philosophers of Romanticism, published only two excerpts from the manuscript of Bożyca lub teozofia, his philosophy of God. A reason why the work was not fully published was a bad reception of the published fragments by the Polish community, whose political identity at the time of Partitions was based on Catholic church. A collation of both published excerpts with the original manuscript reveals characteristic quantitative and qualitative differences between the manuscript and each print: one published in Paris without censorship, the other in Poznań under Prussian censorship law. Collation analysis, together with other documentation of the writing process, let us conclude that censorship interfered the writing process in a form of self-censorship. It also indicates that the author was ready to compromise with institutional censorship in the purpose of publishing, but he refused to compromise on his views to satisfy his readers.