THE PROBLEM OF GOD. THE CONTEXTS OF STÉPHANE MALLARMÉS WRITING

The author attempts to settle the changes of the discourse on God and religion in the second part of 19th century. His considerations lead from romantic theology searching a human dimension of Christ, through the criticism of religion advocated by German philosophers and fascination with Buddhism in French literary circles to psychological and sociological views which define God as a figment of human imagination. Due to such approach the spiritual dilemmas of a man of the end of the century and his struggles to see in God the image oneself (being a reversion of the religious order and results of the advances in anthropology). Such rich background allows not only for a better understanding of the logic of the changes in philosophical discourse, but also their consequences for the development of writing creativity and metaphysical conceptions of one of the most appraised poets of European modernism - Stéphane Mallarmé.