TY - JOUR N2 - This article looks at a character of Jakub Frank, the 18th-century Jewish Messianic leader, in Andrzej Żuławski’s book of idiosyncratic essays Moliwda (published in 1994). Żuławski, a controversial fi lm-maker and writer, whose historic musings are usually focused on an individual who embodies the spirit of the age in this case turns his attention to Jakub Frank. Moliwda is typical of the early phase of Żuławski’s writing career characterized by a radically revisionist explorations of the Age of the Enlightenment in search for parallels with the modern age and his own life. Jakub Frank is presented as a trickster, religious charlatan, political fraudster and fateful ancestor of 20th-century tyrants, but at the same time as a rebel against the idea of God and history enshrined in the Judaic tradition. The article views Żuławski’s interpretation as an attempt to appropriate certain elements of the history of religion to create an authoritarian vision of modernity and its historical roots, based on mechanisms of self-aggrandizement, sexualization of power and subversion of all hierarchies. L1 - http://www.czasopisma.pan.pl/Content/108858/PDF/RL%205-18%207-MISZTELA.pdf L2 - http://www.czasopisma.pan.pl/Content/108858 PY - 2018 IS - No 5 (350) EP - 596 DO - 10.24425/rl.2018.124770 KW - Polish literature of the 20th century KW - historical essay KW - 18-century sectarianism and modernity KW - Jewish Messianism KW - radical visions of history KW - Antoni Kossakowski „Moliwda”(1718–1786) KW - Jakub Frank (1726–1791) KW - Andrzej Żuławski (1940–2016) A1 - Misztela, Piotr PB - Polska Akademia Nauk Oddział w Krakowie Komisja Historycznoliteracka PB - Uniwersytet Jagielloński Wydział Polonistyki DA - 2019.03.19 T1 - The agony of striving: A Profile of Jakub Frank in Andrzej Żuławski’s “Moliwda” SP - 589 UR - http://www.czasopisma.pan.pl/dlibra/publication/edition/108858 T2 - Ruch Literacki ER -