The reconstruction of the experience of participation in culture preserved in the 20th-century personal document literature has become a foundation for a theoretical study of relational culture and challenges for cultural education. In accordance with the imperative of the new humanities, the author uses the research results to outline a possible scope of practical applications by defining cultural education and highlighting its functions for the processes of personal development and cultural formation. The suggestion stipulated in this book, which can be put into practice as part of cultural education, is the act of shaping the ability to express gratitude. The author emphasises literature as an effective factor in this formative process.

The analytical part of the work presents a comprehensive reconstruction of the dialogical relationships in the community of editors of the most important 20th-century magazines: Jerzy Giedroyć, Józef Sadzik, Jerzy Turowicz, Zygmunt Mycielski, and Barbara Toruńczyk. Those people, who were professionally involved in a common circle of Polish culture, valued mutual kindness over business competitivity and political or worldview-related divisions. In the empirical part of the study, the dialogical reconstructions are referred to significant creative experiences based on the correspondence of Thomas Merton and Czesław Miłosz, Józef Czapski and Zygmunt Mycielski, Józef Czapski and Janusz Marciniak, and Iosif Brodski and Czesław Miłosz. This approach has made it possible to elicit the relational qualities of the creative process. Moreover, an important category of gratitude has emerged from the study. The author suggests that the concept of gratitude should be considered as the connective tissue of relational culture in cultural education design.