Dispersed messianism. Wojciech Wencel’s Epigonia and Polonia Aeterna

Abstract

The article shows forms that neo-romantic messianism takes in Wojciech Wencel’s poetry volumes Epigonia and Polonia aeterna. The Polish nation, understood as a primordial community, is depicted through the prism of national-conservative clichés, taken from freely interpreted Sarmatian literature and Mickiewicz’s romanticism. The hero of Wencel’s poems has a sense of mission as a guide for his compatriots through the traps of late modernity and as a guardian of national memory. The language of this poetry, ostentatiously old-fashioned, serves to sacralize history seen as a continuum of struggle and martyrdom. Both books demonstrate a strongly internalized, martyrological-heroic concept of the messianic calling of Poland – although not expressed as directly as in the preceding volume, De profundis.