Literacko-muzyczny dyptyk Wacława Rolicza-Liedera

Abstract

The hybrydity the Young Poland’s modernist literature stems from the ideology of correspondence between literature and arts. Wacław Rolicz-Lieder’s Modlitwa na organy (A Prayer for Pipe Organ) from the Poems III (1895) volume presents links between literature and music. The poet’s fondness for music and his attempts at composing it testify to his sensitivity for musical qualities of language. Rolicz-Lieder was constantly looking for new verse structures, he probed the musicality of his poetic phrases, resorted to musical forms of expressions (e.g. fugue, coda), created multi-sensory synaesthesias with a prominent acoustic component. These features can be observed also in A Prayer for Pipe Organ. The relationship between the two parts of the diptych (the lullaby and ‘the wake-up song’) can be described as a figure of speech called chiasmus, whereby two structures, analogous in terms of semantic content and syntactic construction, are symmetrically reversed. Rolicz-Lieder’ diptych is a conscious artistic design, mirroring the specificity and technical capacities of the eponymous organ. Although the referential scope for music is ultimately determined by literary forms, the poet manages nevertheless to reproduce a musical composition in literature.