INTRODUCTION

The attic is associated with a mysterious place, somewhat hidden from the casual visitor. At the same time, it arouses curiosity about what it hides, it is a promise of something forbidden, an oasis of things, thoughts, imaginings that stopped for a while on the journey between what was created in the real world. Experiences gathered in the attic gain new meaning and return to people again. Such was the "Cultural Attic": an underground magazine that was created in the attic, in the heads of people seeking refuge from a hostile world.

The name of the magazine referred to the heritage of generations; dusty, abandoned somewhere in an attic, and without which the view of the community would nevertheless be an incomplete view. For some it was an opportunity to encounter art, a new thought, an idea for others. Thus, the cultural attic is not only the name of a literary and art magazine, it is also a meeting place for a group of friends forming an independent cultural circuit. It is a converted attic of a single-family house, filled with artists' works, paintings, books, which overlooked the surrounding hills. In front of the house an old orchard of several decades old spreading apple trees with an unmowed multifloral meadow. Lots of greenery everywhere. "From the perspective of the attic (loft) we looked at the world around us, not forgetting the existence of the underground. So we lived a bit of a dualistic life: working, taking care of daily affairs according to communist rules, but spiritually alongside," Marek Kuchcinski, the attic's host and one of the magazine's editors, wrote in the introduction to the reprint. ("SK" was also edited by Jan Musial, Miroslaw Kocol, then Mariusz Kościuk).

Professor Jaroslaw Piekałkiewicz, for example, is not afraid of bold comparisons: The attic had more significance than it appears at first glance. The atmosphere of these gatherings reminded me of my gatherings in the Home Army. In the attic, as in the AK, we felt free. Of course, during the war we risked a lot more, because of torture and death, but for us, as for the members of the Attic, "Poland has not yet perished while we live." Attic participants risked harassment from the Communist authorities, and perhaps even arrest, and certainly difficulties in their careers. Like the rest of us in the Home Army, they were a minority, as most Poles believed it was necessary to live.

"The Cultural Attic" remains a symbol to this day. There is not a serious expert in the history of culture and politics of the 1980s in Poland who would not see the "Attic" as a change. The flame that consumed the entire commune did not erupt from it, but it was one of the sparks that ignited the individual and collective imagination at the time. Even Marek Kuchcinski's greatest opponents admit that he was able to create a place in Przemyśl, on the outskirts of postwar Poland, that gave a sign to others: "We can reach further," attracting well-known thinkers, giving faith to young activists. For if it was successful in Przemyśl, from which it was closer to the wild Bieszczady Mountains than to the salons of big-city couches and big-industry labor movements, why not make the Solidarity revolution elsewhere? Make it more attractive by thinking more deeply about man, his place in culture, history, and the various expressions of rebellion.

When we think about opinion formation today, we immediately embrace the current reality of the information bubble. As a society, we are divided into small groups. We set up ideological frames for ourselves, and they are also imposed by technology. Today, views are largely formatted by the soulless algorithms of online information filtering systems. They are meant to keep us in an intellectual comfort zone, meeting predefined needs. The Przemyśl of the 1980s knew no such framework, allowing independent culture to meet in one place with the agricultural opposition and the underground Solidarity movement. The deeply Catholic intelligentsia found common ground with the farmer, whose main concern was the controlled purchase of pigs and the coarse reality of the state farm. Mixed in the melting pot of influences were the passions of the hippie rebels with the pastoral exhortations of the  Ignacy Tokarczuk, the bishop of Przemyśl. Traditional Polish religiosity clashed with the logic of Wittgenstein's ambiguous faith.

Thus, it can be said that this study is not about a clear grasp of what really happened in the attic of a small house on the outskirts of Przemyśl. It will forever remain the interpretation of the people who frequented there. Because they frequented for different reasons, they took different paths, and that was the strength of the place. Today, the attic is also judged by the person of the then host. A man who is as difficult to assess unequivocally as the "Cultural Attic" itself. Marek Kuchcinski - Speaker of the Sejm, one of the most recognizable politicians of the party that has been in power continuously since 2015. Or perhaps, however, the man from the attic, a dreamer hunched over a typewriter, surrounded by books and craving freedom during long solitary hikes in the Bieszczady Mountains. This second face is almost unknown. A drummer in avant-garde art engaged in a scene walked by Grotowski, and - let's imagine such an Arcadian image - a hippie running through a Lublin meadow, picking cornflowers and tares and ears of grain for a field bouquet for his girlfriends, who fed him Russian dumplings.

Kuchcinski made his strongest mark not only because he was the host of the attic - in truth, he did not run the magazine on his own, after all - but he had a gift for organization. He could convince whomever it took to find a duplicator, and he knew how to pull a ream of paper out from under the ground. He combined stubbornness with courage. In the underground Solidarity movement, he was not known for his political acumen. In Silesia and Podkarpacie, however, it was known that if you needed to flip someone in danger of internment, all you had to do was talk to Marek, because he knew how to pull people wanted by the SB from a moving train. Kuchcinski was valued by bishops and "rank and file" priests. However, he usually preferred to be in the shadows. "The Cultural Attic" also tended to refer to the intellectual legacy, wheedling the interviewee's consciousness with the names of philosophers and historians.

It is difficult to clearly define what the "Cultural Attic" was and what impact it had on the consciousness of many people. Professor Krzysztof Dybciak, a literary historian and theoretician, essayist, and author of poetry, recalls the cultural events, sometimes called "Attic meetings," and the magazine's issues: "They were original phenomena on the map of independent culture existing outside the structures of the communist-ruled state. One of the unusual features was the phenomenon of attracting contributors not only from Poland. It was truly unique at the time for so many artists and British intellectuals to perform in a small (by European standards) city right on the border of the Evil Empire. And Przemyśl hosted not just any artists, Professors Mark Lilla and Roger Scruton are important figures in the world humanities. Yet knowledge of such a valuable phenomenon of free culture in the 1980s is meager."

Marta Olejnik

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