Coincidentia oppositorum in the Index of Prohibited Books: Zagadnienia istotne by Bolesław Piasecki as a Semiotic Operation
Abstract
Zagadnienia istotne is a collection of articles by Bolesław Piasecki from 1945-1953, originally published in Dziś i Jutro and Słowo Powszechne. The book was published by Wydawnictwo Pax [Pax Publishing House] in December 1954. Six months later, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office banned the volume. The essence of the book and the cause of the controversies to which it gave rise was an extensive preface (thoroughly discussed in this article) written by the author in the convention of a political, philosophical and theological dissertation. The coherent intellectual program included in the preface apparently legitimizes participation of a declared Catholic in the discourse conducted by the communist authorities. The coherence in question results from a series of semiotic operations that enable a carefully prepared plane for the coexistence of two conflicting axiologies: the Marxist-Leninist and the Catholic ones. The present article is an analysis of these operations.
