This article examines Bolesław Prus's use of futurology and utopia in his short story Phantoms (Widziadła). A closer look at the story's images and their sequence not only gives us an insight into the author's philosophy of history but also reveals a utopian vision which can hardly be squared with the realism of his previous work. Thus ‘Widziadła’, written in 1911, can be seen as an important piece of evidence of a change in the writer's beliefs and worldview. It was at that late stage of his life that Prus, a hard-nosed realist and critic of the Romantics, turned into an impassioned idealist who, disillusioned with the world around him, sought refuge in literature. It was to be, however, a fiction like ‘Widziadła’, looking beyond the conventions of realism, unashamedly eclectic and visionary.

The thread that runs through this article is made of silk, a fabric with a fascinating history of origins in China and a long record of projects aimed at organizing and mechanizing its production in Europe. The silk motif recurs throughout 19th century literature. As an object of realist description it gives the writer the opportunity to explore its sensuous material appeal and, also, to create around it a web of additional references and associations. For Honoré de Balzac and Bolesław Prus silk carries connotations of elegance, social status and social aspirations. In the fiction of Eliza Orzeszkowa it is one of the regularly recurring elements of descriptions of outward appearance of characters. It can interpreted as a mechanical repetition or, perhaps, the foregrounding of the stereotype meaning of silk intended as an invitation to the moral judgment of characters furnished with that mark.