Polish Romanticism Research Articles

Древняя Русь польских романтиков

This article examines the place of the history of Ancient Rus in the works of the most eminent Polish Romantics — Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Slowacki — with the help of a wide range of written sources (literary works, diaries, lectures, and correspondence). The focus is on (no mistake here, just to avoid repeating “analysis”) the connection between individual historical plots and the Romantics’ range of literary interests s as well as their erudition, but also on their independent attempts to create their own personal historiosophy of the common destiny of the Slavic peoples. As a result of the analysis of medieval Polish and Russian sources, many corrections have been made to the interpretation of individual subjects and their historical context. The issue of the dependence of the authors’ historical ideas on the culture and traditions of the Russian lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the centuriesold antinomy that characterizes it: Russia (Ruthenia) vs Russia (Moscovia) is analyzed separately.

Echi Danteschi nel Romanticismo Polacco

The presented article deals with the specifics of the impact of the artistic motives of Dante Alighieri’s literary achievement on Polish romanticism. The particular attention was focused on the undeniable significance of the ideological component of the “Divine Comedy”, the lyrical motives of which were creatively rethought by the Polish romanticists and proposed in their author’s adaptation according to the historical and social realities of the time. It was stated that the culmination of Dante’s success in the Polish literary environment actually coincided with a difficult period in the history of the state: namely, with the national tragedy of 1795, when the third and the final Partition of Poland occured. It was then that the prominent Florentine artist played for the Polish romanticists the role of a special spiritual guide and teacher, who demostrated the captives some ways to confront the painful reality and to achieve the future liberation of the nation. Dante’s patriotic ideals and hopes for a better future were reflected in the original romantic works of the Polish writers. It was noted that in the context of the growing interest towards the religious issues during the Romantic era, the apocalyptic motives and millenarian vision of the world in Dante’s works served to strengthen the messianic ideas of the Polish romanticists, most of whom put an emphasis on the prophetic and eschatological character of the “Divine Comedy”. It was found that for the authors of the time, the figure of the great Italian was associated with Catholicism or Protestantism. It was accentuated that the creative achievement of Dante Alighieri became one of the greatest sources of artistic inspiration for Polish writers of the Romantic movement. In fact Dante echoes were invented in the works of Adam Asnyk, Zygmunt Krasiński, Adam Mickiewicz, Cyprian Norwid, Juliusz Słowacki, Adam Jerzy Czartoryski and others. At the same time it was underlined that the consideration of the Polish romantic literature as a result of the blind imitation of Dante’s lyrical motives is incorrect. In contrast to the Florentine artist, who represented his own reality in the afterlife, the romanticists aimed to find the afterlife in their everyday life. It is the peculiarity of the establishment of the locus horridus to be a characteristic feature by which Dante can be distinguished from the Polish writers.

РОМАНТИЗМ ЛЕСІ УКРАЇНКИ В ОЦІНЦІ Д. ЧИЖЕВСЬКОГО

The article focuses on D. Chyzhevsky’s assessment of Lesya Ukrainka’s romanticism, outlines the latest trends in the literature of the late XIX – early XX centuries, which professed Lesya Ukrainka as a neo-romantic. The aesthetics of romanticism and its transformation into neo-romanticism are traced. It is about identifying and analyzing the symbolism of Lesya Ukrainka’s works. The subject matter of the poet’s works is considered, the influence of romantic ideas (German, Polish romanticism) at the end of the XIX century is comprehended; combination of theoretical views of the writer with works of art, which is characteristic of romantic writers.

ЛІТЕРАТУРНА ВІЗІЯ ІСТОРІЇ У ТВОРЧОСТІ МІХАЛА ЧАЙКОВСЬКОГО

Polish prose of the “Ukrainian school” in Polish literature, which in its artistic, aesthetic and ideological content was quite a noticeable phenomenon and still remains little studied in Polish and Ukrainian literary criticism. It is also important for us that the concept of literary Ukrainianism is reflected here. This is especially true of writers on the Ukrainian-Polish borderland, many of whom idealized the common Polish-Ukrainian history and were passionate supporters of the Cossacks, as well as those who were fierce opponents of the latter. It can be argued that romantic frontier prose also impresses with all the variety of themes, motives, topos, first of all, related to Ukraine. This is what prompted to choose the object of study of the artistic and textual array of creative heritage of Mikhail Tchaikovsky. The coexistence in the works of romance of myth and history was considered obvious, because historical events were to confirm the truth of the mythical story, the myth, in turn, was to give meaning to history. Given this, this study is relevant and timely, and this approach is quite justified. Tchaikovsky is considered the father of the Polish historical novel. The writer built his works on the basis of Walterscott’s model of the historical novel: a combination of love and historical-political plots. The work is a further step towards rethinking the place and role of Tchaikovsky’s work in Polish romanticism through the prism of the features of historical prose. At the theoretical level, it is an attempt to scientifically read works in broad connection with historical, social and cultural factors. Michal Tchaikovsky’s works on Ukrainian historical themes are undoubtedly a relevant and insufficiently covered topic in Ukrainian Polish studies, so they need new approaches and interpretations. The obtained results, no doubt, can be used in an in-depth and comprehensive study of the history of Polish and Ukrainian literature of the Romantic era. Work experience is also useful in conducting special courses and special seminars, will help in writing new textbooks and manuals, enriching modern knowledge of the theory and history of the “Ukrainian school” of Polish romanticism.

Joseph Conrad a polska cisza romantyczna. Próba zbliżenia

The article attempts to extend the existing Polish-language research on the semantics of silence in Joseph Conrad’s works, and to interpret this semantics, in the view of the Polish literary tradition, to which Conrad indicated his debt subtly but quite unambiguously (e.g. in an interview with Marian Dąbrowski from 1914). The author highlights the perspective of the so-called Ukrainian school in the Polish Romantic Literature, suggesting that it was from this imagination (more than from Mickiewicz’s) that the author of Almayer’s Folly could adopt specific figures: “the cosmic night” and “the ontological silence”. It is visible both in the construction of events (Nostromo, Almayer’s Folly, The Shadow-Line) and in the narrative strategies (Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Chance).

Michał Wiszniewski (1794-1865), italianista, studioso e traduttore di Dante

This study focuses on Michał Wiszniewski’s interest in Dante. Wiszniewski was a professor of history and literature at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow and was fond of Italy. This work aims to outline Wiszniewski’s contribution to the Polish reception of Dante in the first decades of the 19th century. The study recalls Wiszniewski’s three Italian trips and his book, Podróż do Włoch, Sycylii i Malty (A Journey to Italy, Sicily and Malta), which contains numerous mentions of Alighieri. The main part of the study is dedicated to the analysis of his manuscript Dante Alighieri, kept in the Jagiellonian Library (ms. 948 fasc. 7), which has not been carefully examined until now. This manuscript features an outline of a portion of a literature course taught by Wiszniewski in the 1830s, a lesson concerning the life and work of Dante (particularly the Commedia). The professor describes the two faces of Dante: the scholastic one (in prose) and the poetic one (in verse); explains the poem’s title and the structure of the afterlife; admires the extraordinary plasticity of Dante’s images; and translates into Polish a passage from the Convivio and three episodes from the Inferno. The content of his lesson is compared with other earlier and contemporary Polish studies (of very limited number) on the Poet, as well as with the general trends of Dante criticism of that time and with the Dante scholarship of the Polish Romantic poets. The analysis carried out shows that Wiszniewski’s contribution to Dante studies is, in principle, close to Romantic criticism, but it also follows some Neoclassical trends. In the present study, we do not analyse the article Studia nad Dantem (1847) because of its uncertain attribution (as we try to show).

Monuments and space: Exercises in political imagination

The monument to the Polish Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz, erected in 1898 in Krakow’s Main Market Square, is one of the most dynamic spots within the space of the Old Town, in its physical, symbolical and social aspects. Its origins story is an example of proto-patrimonial practices associated with the emergence of the canon of national heritage, understood as specific, existing cultural assets, either material or symbolic, which a given community inherited from previous generations and feels obliged to preserve. Dedicated to a poet whose oeuvre was recognised as priceless national treasure soon after his death, the monument transformed the space around it, imbuing the very centre of Krakow with new semantic codes, associated with the idea of a nation as an autonomous cultural and political community. The statue’s annihilation during the Nazi occupation of Poland and its post-war reconstruction led to a major revaluation of its essential form. The monument changed its patrimonial status and became a kind of a secular relic. Well-integrated into the urban landscape, the Mickiewicz Monument is regarded as one of Krakow’s landmarks, continuously entering interactions with the people around it. For tourists, it is mainly used as a convenient orientation point and an attraction that – as advertised by guide books – ought to be seen and photographed. For Krakow’s residents, it is simply Adaś, a symbol of local identity, a meeting spot and the background for family photographs. Since the very moment of its unveiling, the Mickiewicz Monument has also functioned as a democratic rostrum, becoming one of the brightest spots on the political map of the city.

Hajdamaky e Zamek kaniowski: due visioni della Kolijivščyna

The article aims to analyse the theme of the Cossacks and the haidamaky, which was very present in the works of the great Ukrainian romantics, starting with Taras Shevchenko and Pantelejmon Kulish. It also became the object of poetic elaboration by various Polish poets including Juliusz Słowacki, and the lesser-known, but still interesting, Seweryn Goszczyński and Bohdan Zaleski. They became part of the so-called “Ukrainian school” of Polish Romanticism. In Poland, however, the poets did not interpret in a univocal way neither the historical role of the Sich of the Zaporozhye nor that of the haidamaky who sometimes appear as defenders of the faith and fighters for the independence of Ukraine, while in others they simply come into view as rebels and brigands, cruel and ruthless, who received for theiractions the cruellest punishments. The author compares Haydamaky (Haidamaky, 1841) by Shevchenko and Zamek kaniowski (Kaniów Castle, 1828) byGoszczyński, because they describe the same story from 1768, the so-called Massacre of Humań, i.e. Koliyivshchyna, but with two different visions.

Wincenty Pol (1807–1872) — Stanisław Moniuszko (1819–1872) — relacje i korelacje artystyczne

Wincenty Pol (1807–1872) romantic poet, guardian of the national tradition — Stanisław Moniuszko (1819–1872) representative of Polish Romanticism in music, restorer of the national opera, author of several hundred solo songs.Pol and Moniuszko knew and inspired each other with their work, which was significantly influenced by folklore from the borderlands. Moniuszko’s masses, litanies and cantatas were one of the incentives for Pola to address the issue of religious music in his lectures.Both were connected with four Polish scientific and cultural centers: Vilnius, Warsaw, Krakow and Lviv, where they met in 1865.The poet and composer had mutual friends and acquaintances: recognized composers-conductors, writers and poets, music critics and actors. They both considered art as one of the means to educate the society living under the partitions. They entered the history of Poland as defenders of the native language and culture.

„The Betrayal Method”. Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz’s Struggle with the Specter of Science

The article discusses the reluctance of some Polish representatives of the humanities towards the dictatorship of the Reason that underlies the scientifi c paradigm. The work of Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, especially from the later period, is used as an example of such an attitude. A renowned poet, essayist, and scholar of Polish Romanticism, Rymkiewicz presents a suggestive anti-rationalist diatribe in his discursively heterogeneous works, situated on the verge of an essay, an academic dissertation, and fi ction. The main goal of the article is to reconstruct this diatribe (inspired by the specifi c Rymkiewicz’s reading of Heidegger’s philosophy) the elements of remain scattered among numerous books by Rymkiewicz.

The smell of the revenant - Jacek Dehnel’s But Together With Our Dead

The article attempts to interpret Jacek Dehnel’s book But Together With Our Dead, which invokes the spiritual ideas of the Polish Romanticism. It is based on the figure of the zombie – the living dead, the revenant who is the carrier of various references and contexts. The figure also allows us to read Dehnel’s novel not only in the context of a grotesque aimed at Romanticism, but also in the context of the current socio-political situation, immutably founded on the spirit of national megalomania, rising from crypts and burial mounds.

Epitafia dla romantyzmu polskiego na przełomie lat 80. i 90. XX wieku

The article is about three texts of Polish culture (a 1989 film by Tadeusz Konwicki, A Tale of Adam Mickiewicz’s ‘Forefathers’ Eve, based on Mickiewicz’s poem Dziady, and two novels: Rien ne va plus by Andrzej Bart, 1991 and List of the adulteresses. Travel prose by Jerzy Pilch, 1993) which seem to bid farewell to the long duration of Polish romanticism. The three works concur with Maria Janion’s thesis who heralded, in a democratic and independent Poland after the political changes of 1989, the twilight of the romantic paradigm as it had existed since the first half of the nineteenth century. A more detailed analysis of these cultural texts allows us to grasp the complexity and the ambiguity of the relationships that Konwicki, Bart and Pilch have with the romantic legacy.

Darwinism and Surrealism: The Case of Juliusz Słowacki’s "Samuel Zborowski"

Juliusz Słowacki has been acknowledged as a precursor of the Young Poland poets and recognized as one of the “Three Bards” of Polish Romanticism. A visionary of mystical experience, his later works took a focus on Polish history, including the drama Samuel Zborowski, which has been referred to as one of the boldest visionary dramas in world literature. This paper explores the relation of Juliusz Słowacki’s drama Samuel Zborowski to Darwinism and Surrealism. As a contemporary of Darwin, this paper presents several overlapping points in time between the lives of Słowacki and Darwin, as well as Słowacki’s relations to both Darwin and his predecessors. It has been argued that Samuel Zborowski is the first surrealistic work in Polish literature. It employs varied scenic tricks that can be termed surrealistic. The textual images of the work include several cinematographic special effects, and the subjects explored in Samuel Zborowski reflect a condensed, symbolic shorthand sign of cosmic experience and historiosophic meditation. At times impressionistic, the concepts therein are formulated by analogy, allusion and synthesis, with signs and images point to infinity. Taken together, we have a dramatic exposition of fundamental Genesis philosophy, interwoven and ultimately subordinate to the perennial Polish Question in the context of Romantic Messianism. The rich philosophical sources of Samuel Zborowski reveal a wealth of influences. The end result is a strange symbiosis of Poland’s national history, Słowacki’s messianistic historiosophy, and the scientific heritage of Darwin’s predecessors.

Kardynał Charles Journet wobec mesjanizmu Mickiewicza

Artykuł omawia główne tezy esejów Charles’a Journeta, poświęconych tema­tyce mesjanizmu oraz polskiej kulturze narodowej. Trzy z nich ujrzały światło dzienne w polskim tłumaczeniu po raz pierwszy w 2017 roku. Stanowią one ciekawy epizod pozytywnej recepcji polskiego romantyzmu, zwłaszcza nurtu myśli religijnej i politycznej, jakim był mesjanizm. Niniejszy szkic odsłania sposób lektury teologa i metody jego postępowania z tekstem prelekcji Adama Mickiewicza. Rekonstruując myśl Journeta, wskazuje się tu na podstawowe błędy romantycznego mesjanizmu. Równocześnie podkreśla się wiele przesła­nek świadczących o oryginalności założeń i postulatów zawartych w wykła­dach o literaturze słowiańskiej, z których najważniejsze dotyczą m.in. wątków obecnych we współczesnej społecznej nauce katolickiej.

Bogdan Jański i jego współcześni

Artykuł poświęcony jest postaci Bogdana Jańskiego – emigracyjnego działa­cza doby romantyzmu. Punkt wyjścia stanowi przedstawienie biografii zało­życiela zmartwychwstańców. Skonfrontowane zostały ze sobą różne wersje jego życiorysu: od hagiograficznej, poprzez popularną, aż po ściśle naukową. Przypomniana i wyjaśniona zostaje kwestia relacji Jańskiego z Adamem Mickiewiczem (osobista przyjaźń, wzajemne wpływy światopoglądowe). Ważny element wywodu stanowi ukazanie powiązań „apostoła emigracji” z innymi autorytetami duchowymi tego okresu. Artykuł ma na celu przypomnienie skomplikowanych i interesujących dziejów Jańskiego oraz miejsca, jakie zaj­muje on w historii Wielkiej Emigracji, a także wyjaśnienie pewnych kwe­stii spornych związanych z jego biografią (np. zakresu wpływu Jańskiego na twórczość poetycką Mickiewicza).

Janina Ludawska in memoriam (1921–2019)

The author presents his personal recollections of Janina Ludawska, a Polish theatre scholar of Jewish origins who passed away in 2019 in Stockholm. Ludawska spent a significant part of her life in Sweden, where she found refuge during the war when she studied chemistry. She returned to Warsaw after the war and she started taking an interest in the theatre. In the late 1940s and early 1950s she studied in Moscow in The Russian Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS). Back in Poland, she devoted her energy to the establishment of a new Polish theatre. When the anti-Semitic policy of the communist government caused her to leave Poland again in 1968, she found a new home for herself and her son in Stockholm. In 1970 she was employed at the library of the Department of Theatre Studies at Stockholm University, and she pursued her scholarly work. Interested in Polish Romantic drama, she published an anthology in Swedish: Poetic Political Theatre: On Polish Romantic Drama and Its Scenic Traditions. She also defended her doctoral dissertation on three Swedish productions of Gombrowicz’s The Marriage. Ludawska saw theatre, with its aesthetics, its history, and its social functions, as one of the pillars of democratic institutions.

Waśnie martyrologiczne Wielkiej Emigracji. Demokraci wobec Mickiewicza

Today, the martyrological discourse is one of the most conspicuous traditions of Polish Romanti-cism. When searching for the genesis of this discourse, one cannot overestimate the importance of the literary and political activities of Adam Mickiewicz from the autumn of 1832 to the middle of 1833. However, little is known about the problem of the resonance of Mickiewicz’s martyrological language and about how this discourse functioned in various texts of the Great Emigration. This paper attempts to answer those questions in reference to left-leaning texts of Komitet Narodowy Polski (KNP) and To-warzystwo Demokratyczne Polskie (TDP) from the 1830s. A study of the writings of KNP has led the author to the conclusion that they represent a common martyrological code of the emigration’s logo-sphere, while the TDP publications constitute an interesting variation of the martyrological collective imagination. The original character of the martyrological expression of the democrats stems from their views on the role of the people in regaining independence. On the other hand, certain common traits existed between TDP and Mickiewicz, which demonstrates that democrats modified the martyrological framework as a national narrative established by Mickiewicz.

„Teatr mój łojówką złoty [...]”. Światło jako element pozasłownej ekspresji w dziełach dramatycznych Juliusza Słowackiego

This article focuses on the notion of light in chosen dramatic works of Juliusz Słowacki – oneof the most well-known Polish Romantics. The analysis of his literary legacy confirms that he perceivedbrightness not only as a motif, but also as a – purposefully used – theatrical sign. Drama asa literary genre also gave Słowacki a possibility to freely combine tradition and conventions fromthe fields of literature, aesthetics and philosophy, and to include descriptive passages and philosophicalreflections in his writings, which was often the case with his works from the 1840s.

Direct and Intuitive Cognition in the Philosophy of Polish Romanticism

The comprehensive introductory part of the present article is a discussion of the notion of the intuition in the ancient and classical understanding, ultimately established in the centuries-old European philosophical tradition. Especially important in this context are the intuitive components contained in neoplatonism. It is the intuition that initiates cognitive processes and then it involves references to metaphors and images, but it also crowns the cognitive process in the unifying vision of a true being, identical with reason. The stages of the process are accompanied by a special kind of intuition. In the context of this kind of tradition the understanding of both intuition and direct cognition in Polish Romanticism becomes enriched. “Feeling” can be legitimately interpreted as “intuition” for what really exists, and thus constituting the basis for an expanded hierarchy of values. It is thanks to the concept of reason, different from its understanding in Enlightenment, enriched with “feeling” and imagination, that Romanticism regained the view of man, forgotten in the preceding epoch, as the being directed towards its eschatological destination. Subsequently the above currents of thought were profusely illustrated with references to the views of Polish Romantic thinkers, like Maurycy Mochnacki, particularly Bronisław Trentowski and August Cieszkowski.

The Great Dream about an Incubator and Golden Chickens. Oleksandr Astafi ev, Dialog literatur. Navchalnyi posibnyk, Vydavnycho-polihrafi chnyi centr “Kyivskyi universytet”, Kyiv 2018, 140 pp.

The review emphasises that the new textbook by Oleksandr Astafiev, Dialogue of Literatures, on the one hand seems to be based on the experience of normative poetic theories of Aristotle, Horace, as well as professors of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy – Feofan Prokopovich, Mitrofan Dovgalevsky, Pavel Kanyuchka – and, on the other hand, takes into account the content of numerous formulated poetics (from the Ukrainian school in Polish romanticism to literary manifestos and works of art of the 20–30s, 60–90s). In the context of the debate over the status of current literary history (David Perkins), a natural question arises: is it possible to create a textbook for creative youth that supports their talents, instills in them the norms of creating artistic values, and multiplies the “golden chicken conveyor”? The author models the experience of the Ukrainian school in Polish romanticism, which supported the spiritual tradition of the Ukrainian and Polish peoples and preserved our cultural memory. What is needed here is the “golden mean”, when art products should be focused not on the pop-culture industry and multimedia “cocktails” but on overcoming the asymmetry between the ideal form of our spiritual existence and reality itself.