Powtórzenie niemożliwe. O estetycznym doświadczeniu przeszłości w Pannach z Wilka Jarosława Iwaszkiewicza

The author attempts to describe the aesthetic experiences of the past lived by the protagonist of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s The Wilko Girls, and answer the question about the possibility of repetition. Elaborating on the arguments proposed by Friedrich Nietzsche in The Gay Science and by Søren Kierkegaard in Repetition, the author proves that even with a favourable attitude to one’s own past, an attempt to repeat past experiences is impossible. Nothing can be experienced again. The past is closed. The possibility of only partial access to it is created by human sensuality referring to the notion of aisthesis, which is the source of aesthetic experience. The senses stimulated by various sounds, smells, tastes, images, and the accompanying memories and emotions, constitute a vast spectrum of aesthetic experiences, making the experience of the past an existential experience of time.