Konkurs na wiersz o księciu Józefie Poniatowskim (1913)

Abstract

The article reports the course of the contest to write a poem about Prince Józef Poniatowski. In order to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the death of the Polish and European model of chivalry, the editorial office of the most popular Polish literary periodical in the 19th century – “Tygodnik Ilustrowany” – announced and conducted in 1913 a contest to write a poem about Prince Poniatowski. 257 works were submitted for the competition. After preselection, jury chose 25 poems, which were afterwards thoroughly studied. The first prize was awarded to Zdzisław Kleszczyński for the poem titled Książę (Wizje) [The Prince (Visions)]. The article analyses the prize-winning poem and indicates that apart from the hyperbolization of deeds and moral virtues of a knight, typical for contest, the work also contains elements of philosophical pessimism. The pessimism and fatalism was expressed in the opinion that Poles’ historical role had been dying for the motherland without any hope for a military success. This attitude had made the warriors become the sacrifice on the altar of the idea of freedom. It signifies the dominance of Romantic ideas in the Polish political thought. The further part of the article pertains to the problem of the identity of the contest participants. The crests with which the authors signed their works are analysed. A crest is described in the article as a verbalized sense of identity. The crests make up 7 thematic groups: Latin culture, French culture, English culture, Polish prehistory, the geography of the country, Polish literature. Most often the authors created their own life imperatives out of quotes from Roman Stoics and from Polish tribal history. According to the author of the article, it constitutes an argument that before the First World War, Polish national identity was built upon two pillars: the cult of the ancient Rome (the European identity) and the myth about the establishment of the Polish state (the ethnic identity).