'What is to be done with that Sacred Thing?': Religious Themes in the late Work of Miron Bialoszewski

The author examines the problem of man's relation to the sphere of religion (language, ideas, topoi) and Transcendence in the late phase of Miron Bialoszewski's creative life. The analysis is concerned with the following issues: a critique of the phase concept of existence and the soul-body dialectic in Judeo-Christianity, the role of religious language in relating existential experiences found in everyday life, the fragmentation of the Subject creating an insuperable barrier to transcendental experience, metaphysics as an expression of the philosophy of the Neutral, and ironic eschatological visions. Placed in the context of philosophical debates ranging from metaphysics (Heidegger, Levinas) and anthropology (Eliade, Durkheim) to theology (Scheler, Cottier, Gilson), Bialoszewski's work and his peculiar poetic idiom reveals, as the article tries to prove, an atheistic existentialism.