Abstract

The article presents interpretations of various manifestations of “negative cognition” in the literature of early modernism. Negative cognition on the threshold of modernity, emerged as a response to the crisis of scientist and religious awareness. Found in works by Tadeusz Miciński, Kazimierz Przerwa Tetmajer, Bolesław Leśmian, Jerzy Hulewicz, it takes many forms: from agnosticism, through diverse approaches to the category of “Mystery” to the principle of silence as evidence of belief in the inability to express not only the Transcendence, but any knowledge of reality. The author examines the issue of “the unknowable” in three thematic areas: the subject, God, and the world. The final part of the paper contains reflections on silence as the equivalent of shouting, significant for expressionism.