Ruch Literacki

This article discusses a range of national, axiological and symbolic motifs in Juliusz Słowacki’s Kordian in the context of the poet’s changing attitude towards the idea of a national uprising. That evolution can be traced throughout his work, especially in his Poems, Volume III (1833). In Kordian, the article argues, Słowacki does not hide his displeasure with readers who fail to appreciate the universal appeal of poetry and pre-sents, in response to Adam Mickiewicz’s accusations, a rival vision of national struggle. Kordian has the dramatic structure of an inverted Shakespeare tragedy with a number of Satanist elements (most notably the introductory ‘Preparations’). The key role is given to three weapons – the sword, the dagger and the bayonet. Each of them symbolizes a dis-tinct value system, i.e. the chivalric ethos, the code of the assassins, and the military code respectively. A close analysis of the multilevel significance and metaphoric function of various scenes and objects shows that Kordian is shaped by a pattern of axiological conflicts and contradictions.

This article examines the topos of blindness in Juliusz Słowacki’s unfinished drama Horsztyński. The metaphorical blindness of the drama’s main character, Szczęsny, seems to belie the Romantic belief that the loss of natural vision is compensated by the shar-pening of the inner senses, when oculis corporis are replaced by oculis mentis. Nonethe-less, the article argues, Słowacki’s use of the topos of blindness falls in with some aspects of the Romantic beliefs concerning loss of vision.

This article is concerned with the status of the body in Juliusz Słowacki’s speculative philosophy (Genesis from the Spirit). Its aim is to introduce an important clarification into the dominant view of Słowacki’s approach, which, it is generally believed, regards the mortal body as a prison-house of the spirit and a material drag on the progress to salvation. However, a close reading of some passages from the Spirit King, backed by quotations from his philosophical writings allows us to posit an opposite view, i.e. that the body can be a shelter for the indwelling spirit. This, nonetheless, does not invalidate the strictures of the Platonic formula. The body offers us a place of refuge from the excruciating spiritual pain, but at the cost of blocking our contact with the fullness of reality and making us dependent on imperfect senses. The picture is complicated further by scientific progress with its promises of making our lives safer and more comfortable (i.e. more protected). In all, we may conclude that Słowacki is not only ready to acknowl-edge the paradoxical condition of human body but also to grant it an indispensable function in the anthropological model underpinning the Genesis from the Spirit.

This article is a study of the memoirs, letters and articles written by Ryszard Berwiński after he moved to Constantinople to join Michał Czajkowski’s Cossack regiment of the Ottoman army fighting Russia in the Crimean War (1853–1856) until his death in 1879. Its primary aim is the reconstruction and a critical appraisal of Berwiński’s notion of histor-ical relations and affinities between Poland and Turkey. With its manifest partiality and propagandistic agenda (he presents the Ottoman Empire as a friend and ally that could help Poland in its struggle for independence), Berwiński’s narrative is an exemplary case of Romantic history-writing. He tries wholeheartedly to level off the all too obvious differences between the political life and institutions of the two countries. Nor does not shy away from the clash-of-civilizations problem that would make sustainable co- operation between Poland and Turkey illusory. His argument is two-pronged. First, he pieces together a sound historical argument to deconstruct the myth of Poland as the bulwark of Christianity in the East, and, secondly, he builds up a myth of 'righteous Turkey' which, like Poland, has been the victim of the predatory West (with modernizing Russia presumably the new member of the club). In effect, the old differences and animosities are trumped by a new myth – with a strong emotional and moral appeal – according to which Poland and Turkey are partners because they share the same fate. Berwiński’s eye-opening mission made hardly any ripple, it remains an intriguing, if largely forgotten, contribution to the 19th-century Polish political thought. This article brings it back from obscurity with the suggestion that relations with Turkey – the only neighbour of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that neither participated in nor re-cognized the partitions – still remain an insufficiently researched subject.

This article is contains a new interpretation of the subject and symbolic meaning as well as a reappraisal of Tymon Niesiołowski’s two pastel paintings inspired by Juliusz Słowacki’s poem Król-Duch (The Spirit King). Crucial to the revised reading of the painting Złotogłów (Asphodel) is the conflation of the statue of Perun (the Slavic god of war) with Popiel (legendary king of Poland) and elements of Stanisław Wyspiański’s design of the St Stanislaus stained glass window in Wawel Cathedral, i.e. an intertextual link between Perun’s curse and the curse cast by Bishop Stanislaus of Szczepanów on the King. The subject of the other painting is now identified as the moment of incarnation of the Spirit King in King Bolesław the Bold and his descent on earth.

This analysis and interpretation of the poem ‘Upiór’ (Spectre) by Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz concerns itself primarily with the ‘figures of collective imaginarium’ both in his work and that of his followers. Used as an interpretative frame, the figure of the Spectre is used to highlight the role of Rymkiewicz and other poets inspired by him as the ‘posthumous’ condition. The label implies that a new community still look back to figures of Romantic fiction for an ideal reference point and hangout sign. It is also worth noting that items picked up in the romantic storage room undergo a though ideological and political face-lift. A closer look at the literary strategies employed in ‘Upiór’ leads to the conclusion that although Rymkiewicz offers us Romanticism simplified, its seductive force is undiminished, and so are the consequences. In this sense the metaphoric pre-sentation of Rymkiewicz as a Spectre communing with the living in the ceremony of Dziady can help us to better understanding of the poet’s impact not only on literature but also on the broad sphere of public imagination.

This article examines the spatial structure of ‘Romantyczność’ (Romanticism), Adam Mickiewicz’s iconic ballad. The analysis focuses on the ways in which different and interconnected spaces are positioned to create a specific configuration involving the poem's characters. As the poem is modelled on a dramatic situation, the analysis pri-marily makes use of the tools of the poetics of drama. It is thus possible to trace the functioning of the perception mechanisms of the individuals involved in the dramatic scene, and, what's more, to regard it as a creation of that meeting of minds - characters from the poem. This interpretative twist opens up further questions about the scene's coherence and meanings that have been read into it.