Waclaw Berent's significance as a prose writer of the Mloda Polska (Young Poland) tradition rests on his aesthetic perception of existence as the central value justifying art and life. His difficult, refined style offers a statement of the pursuits of life in which art, mythology, medieval mysticism, and Enlightenment forms of education create values of enduring significance not only for Poland but for all people.

Waclaw Berent was born on 28 September 1873 in Warsaw to Paulina Deike and Karol Berent; he was part of an affluent family of merchants who valued education as well as refined living. During his university studies in Zurich and Munich, Berent specialized in the natural sciences and in 1895 published his doctoral thesis in Jena (Germany) on ichthyology. He lived briefly in Kraków but spent most of his life in Warsaw.

Berent's writing career began in the late nineteenth century with the publication...