Notatki do Notatek z nieudanych rekolekcji paryskich K. I. Gałczyńskiego

Abstract

Personalism and existentialism are two essential ways to understand and explain ideas, axiological and philosophical assumptions contained in Notatki z nieudanych rekolekcji paryskich (The Notes from the Futile Parisian Retreat), and two co-ordinate routes of ideological and artistic analysis and interpretation of Gałczyński’s lyrical masterpiece. The article shows how the mystery of the tragic tainting of the existence by evil and redemption lies at the foundation of the concept of the man-pilgrim; the final destination of his peregrinations in Paris in search of the sacrum is symbolised by the nightly return to the Notre-Dame Cathedral. The religious terms of reference determine Gatczynski’s associations, enter the intrinsic tissue of the poetic symbols of the poem, decide of its allegorical structure (the struggle of the good and the evil), contributes to the re-interpretation of history (diplomacy leads to disgrace), reveals the value of the moral attitudes of Christianity. Man, whose dignity is esteemed particularly highly by the poet, is present in that sacral time- space, although he sees him in a mundane perspective, on the one hand: as a coward entangled in sin, “one of those from Sodom and Gomorrah”, while on the other: as the man recognizing the voice of the “Galilee flute”, participating in the Godly life. Gałczyński, by means of the “eye-witness sources” (paintings, stories, myths, allusions) tried to get an insight into the foundation of truth, which made itself present — for him and in him — through the elements of language and symbolism of the poem (the world as shown, the world as experienced, the contents of the prayer and conversation with God), he tried to emphasize that truth in the interpretation of the catastrophic aspects of the horror of existence after Yalta. The tension between devotion to the sacrum and betrayal of it constitutes a property of the intrinsic structure of the existence; man is satisfied with objects, myths, reasons which he contemplates and creates for himself in his habit and sense of security. The internal tragic attitude is enlivened by the situation of tension between the eternal demands of the sacrum and the urgent demands of the existence. Those relative demands seal the tragic nature of the main character of The Notes from the Futile Parisian Retreat, and also create a chance for the everlasting demands, a chance to stay faithful to the sacrum.