Dziecko i dzieciństwo jako kategoria psychofizyczna i egzystencjalna we współczesnej poezji

Abstract

In this article I discuss child and childhood as a psycho-physical and existential category in contemporary poetry. The introductory remarks concern the evolution of the perception of that category. Childhood has never been, and is not, a universal phase of human development, but rather a socio-cultural phenomenon, and as such - historically variable, determined by the social relationship: adults - children. Psychological and pedagogical tendencies influenced the changes in the nature of literature for children; the departure from the autocratic bidermeier model, awarding absolute superiority of adults over children, towards the paidocentric model, placing the child and its world in the centre of the society and culture. The analyses and interpretations of contemporary poetry are meant to serve the reconstruction of literary concretization: the child in relationships to the dearest ones - mother and father, the category of the child as a participant and creator of work-play or play-work, the child as an imitator, the child as a creator, the child as a discoverer, the child as a competitor, and also the category of the child as a pupil. And the world presented in the selected works exemplifies the specified categories, among which the category of the child — imitator seems to dominate, because the child community imitates everything, usually according to childbecoming- adult scenarios. However, in the majority of the discussed texts, the category of the child is of a mixed nature, the child — literary character appears collectively and simultaneously in all of the roles. The poems referred to in the article are poetic images of childlike behaviour created by adult authors impersonating the child’s imagination. Therefore, the axiology of an intermediary reader for the little recipient may not always be unambiguous. Thus, I express the interpretative theses with some level of modality, i.e. with regard to the degree of definition (certainty) with which the given judgment is proclaimed.