“Stanisław Vincenz’s Homo Agens” is a phrase inspired by the contemporary experience of the pandemic as a time that demands action. Social distance, isolation and lockdown have become the lot of most people in the world, yet at the same time we have all witnessed and are witnessing spectacular and moving activity by individuals, professional groups and societies.

What will we remember from these protracted months of blight? What will we learn about ourselves and about human communities?

Thanks to the pandemic, can we look differently at the experiences of our ancestors and of “Others” – in the past, in the present situation, or are those experiences pushed beyond the horizon of our existence? How much of the aura of contagion can we perceive in war, ethnic cleansing, emigration, imprisonment and exclusion?                                                 

We are mainly interested in the biography, and the literary and intellectual legacy of Stanisław Vincenz – an author and philosopher who linked the concept of freedom with action.

We propose a focused, though of course not restricted, reading of On the High Uplands, The Post-War Adventures of Socrates, Dialogues with the Soviets, essays, brochures and correspondence in order to hear once again the voice of Vincenz, who witnessed and participated in several historical breakthroughs and dramatic social processes: the industrial revolution in the Eastern Carpathians, the birth of nationalism which destroyed the fabric of local communities, both World Wars, the Holocaust, emigration and solitude. Is the coherence of this writing confirmed in the sphere of the ethical agenda inscribed in the documents of personal life and literary fiction? Where do the roots of Vincenz’s imperative to act lead and what is his homo agens guided by? What is the essence of the “word for the world” inscribed in the multicultural and multilingual Hutsul tetralogy?