“Disgusting Growths of Weepy Romanticism”. On Juliusz Słowacki’s Beniowski

Abstract

In 1841, Wacław Jabłonowski, in a review of Juliusz Słowacki’s Beniowski, depicted in the poet a fiery rain which would cleanse the nation of “disgusting growths of weepy Romanticism”. The paper presents an ironic play with the motif of tears in the poem, which is, above all, a play with literary conventions. An example of farewell love letters flooded with tears is regarded not only in the context of the poet’s distance from sentimental and romantic affects (the issue of authenticity and artificiality) or from literary styles, but also in the context of the imagological constructs of—real or projected—Polish identity as well as reactions to the loss of independence. Juxtaposing Beniowski with Byron’s Don Juan, the paper shows how Słowacki overcomes irony and moves towards mysticism.