Meander czyli zapiski o „pięknym” Słowackim

Abstract

Looking at the portrait of Juliusz Słowacki in Józef Reitzenheim’s biography (1862), in which the poet is wearing a white shirt with the characteristic wide-spreading collar, we see the poet as a ‘beautiful’ man. A literary portrait of the poet outlined by the Hungarian writer György Spiró in his novel Messiahs one and a half century later is the completely different. With time, the legend of the ‘beautiful’ Slowacki has been ‘enriched’ with the tales of his incredible business acumen during the the years of emigration. It was strongly emphasised by the Berkeley ‘professor’ Czesław Miłosz in his misleading textbook for American students. In fact Słowacki most probably treated his trading on the stock exchange as an adventure compensating for his inability to participate in the adventures of the heroes of Cooper’s novels, which he greatly enjoyed. Słowacki was an avid reader, his favourite writers were Dante, Ariosto, Tasso and Shakespeare. He also read Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz many times, which inspired him to write his own Pan Tadeusz. This deliberately fragmented work gives an impression – unnoticed by scholars so far – of being the work of an Italian Mannerist painter. Therefore, it is not a tribute to the great adversary but a work which sprang from the desire to surpass and discredit him. Furthermore, a careful reading of Mickiewicz’s Konrad Wallenrod today, the work creatively ‘imitated’ by Słowacki several times, leads to the discovery of certain passages inspired by it Słowacki’s W Szwajcarii poems (In Switzerland), the fact also overlooked by scholars.