Modernizm : ciemny nurt : studia z dziejów poezji

Abstract

1. The treatise is a multi-aspect monograph of one of threads of Polish modernism. It analyses a complex set of issues, the heart of which is the category of darkness - understood as a figurę of poetic imagination and a metaphorical simulation of experience. Historico-literary examination considering long-lasting modernist tendencies serves to prepare the ground for a close reading with strong analytical underpinnings and faithful to the interpretative directives inscribed in the text. In my deliberations, a description of the structure of the individual works forms a base for recognizing the cognitive power of poetry. The strength of this perspectiye in revealing the existential dimension of literaturę is that it enables the description of the dark current of modern lyrical poetry as an expression of spiritual life. In doing so the book presents a rangę of complementary strands within this dark current all of these elements come to the foreground with yarying strength throughout the treatise. The relation which links them remains as a point of reference of the inyestigations, and it structures the subseąuent stages of the discourse, thus creating a distinctiye frame for the readings presented and the interpretations deriyed from them. 2. Remarks, the introduction to the treatise, indicates a point of departure for discussion within the book - it determines the form of research survey. Subseąuent chapters are interpretiye encounters. Parts of them focus on single works, expecially poems (with the exception of initial chapter which is deyoted to The Toner from Wyspiański’s The Liberation, a character who is a poet standing on the stage of modernity). Other chapters offer a cross-sectional presentation of selected aspects of important poets’ works falling within a broad understanding of Modernism (Leśmian, Czechowicz, Wat, Herbert, Krynicki). They all constitute a panorama of encounters with 20th century lyrical poetry with different yarieties of darkness - artistic, existential, spiritual, metaphysical, political. 3. The panorama outiined in the book depicts the internal dynamics of 20th century Polish poetry, the changes and the reyisions taking place within it. However, it also reveals a long-standing modernist form of imagination, often shaped as early as the Young Poland moyement, and it is this period which is the most important among the historico- literary contexts considered in this treatise.