‘It Seems I’m Scattered by the Wind’: Liber tristium – Franciszek Pik Mirandola’s Debut Poetry Volume

Abstract

Summary Franciszek Pik Mirandola’s debut poetry volume, whose title Liber tristium (1898) was inspired by a book of elegies of the 16th-century Polish-Latin poet Ianicius, is a projection of the poet’s own psychological dilemmas in a tone of voice echoing the splenetic mode of Baudelaire and Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer. His poems are uneven; their weaknesses are hard to overlook. Yet in spite of his all too obvious dependence on the fin de siècle (and Young Poland’s) poetics and mannerisms, he manages to rise above the run-of-the-mill laments and decadent clichés. Taken as a whole, the poetry of the idiosyncratic pharmacist from Krosno has the ring of an authentic inner struggle of an alienated individual looking for some metaphysical signs that would give meaning to his life. In his search he draws on Schopenhauer and the currently fashionable Hinduistic themes, but he does it with commendable good sense. He should also be praised for his ‘aquatic’ poems, especially the sonnet cycle Nieznajomi (Strangers).