Under the Economic Forum in Karpacz, a literary festival was held on 5-6 September 2023. Literary Festival “Literature Builds the World”, which was organised by the Book Institute.

As part of the festival, the Book Institute prepared two meetings and two concerts. The first day of the Economic Forum hosted a panel discussion ‘The end of the Christian world? – Europe facing a paradigm shift’, moderated by Book Institute Director Dariusz Jaworski. It was attended by Professor Zbigniew Stawrowski and Lithuanian politician and political scientist Surplys Giedrius Seimas and musician Robert Friedrich alias Litza.

The starting point of the panel was the thesis on the end of the Christian world put forward by Chantal Delsol. Dariusz Jaworski asked what this end of the Christian world looks like and whether we are actually witnessing it.

Professor Stawrowski undertook a brief summary of the book, explaining the author’s perspective and pointing out at the beginning that Delsol does not mean by Christianity only a religion, but rather the entire culture of the West.

‘Sixteen centuries have passed and Chantal Delsol says: this form of the world has disappeared, it is no longer there, or if it is there, it is in agony’, said Zbigniew Stawrowski, director of the Institute for Thought of Józef Tischner.

Christianity, by means of inversion, subjugated the world of ancient Rome, and now the inversion of inversion has taken place. Does this mean that a new quality is being created? According to Delsol, the destruction of the Christian world does not mean a vacuum and a world of nihilism. What fills it? Neo-paganism. According to Delsol, in today’s world we can find a reflection of the pagan world. Prof. Stawrowski found Delsol’s description accurate, although one-sided.

On the second day of the festival, there was a meeting “On the trail of crimes from years ago. Polish retro detective fiction”, which was devoted to the phenomenon of Polish detective fiction in a historical costume.

The discussion with Anna Kańtoch, author of fantasy books, and Tomasz Duszyński, journalist, writer, and scriptwriter of computer games, was moderated by Piotr Gociek, a publicist.

Adrian Andrzejewski