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Pięć zarysów in the context of the transformation of Cyprian Norwid’s poetic programmatic statements
Abstract
From his earliest works, Cyprian Norwid often formulated metaliterary reflections and proclamations in his poetic works. The poet produced a number of programmatic poems: either manifestos focused mainly on the poet’s stance and role as an artist, on the issues of poetic language and the aesthetics of poetry, or broader ideological proclamations (worldviews, social and civilisational ideas). We should mention here, among others, the first poetic manifestoes from the Warsaw period (the poems Pióro [My Quill Pen] and Do wieśniaczki [To the Peasant Girl]), a number of works from the collection Vade-mecum (inter alia: Liryka i druk [Lyricism and Print], Kolebka pieśni [The Cradle of Songs], Ostatni-despotyzm [The Last Despotism], Fortepian Szopena [Chopin’s Grand Piano]), masterpieces from the latter period, such as Na zgon Poezji (Elegia) [On the Death of Poetry (Elegy)], Do Bronisława Z. [To Bronisław Z.]. There is also a literary and aesthetic-programmatic dimension to the great discursive poems (Promethidion, Rzecz o wolności słowa [On the Freedom of Speech]) and numerous works from the domain of Norwid’s narrative poetry and artistic prose. In Pięć zarysów [Five Sketches], the cycle that opens the 1862 collection of Norwid’s Poezje [Poems], the dominant features are those of treatise poetry, the content of which deals with the general issues of Polish literature and art, but also with the cardinal issues of European culture, the worldview of the age. This type of poetry appears in Norwid’s creative biography from Pieśni społecznej czterech stron [Four Pages of a Social Song] (1849) through Niewola [Enslavement], Psalmów-psalm [Psalm of Psalms], Promethidion – all the way to Rzecz o wolności słowa [On the Freedom of Speech] (1869). Programmatic reflection serves the poet to mark his distinctiveness, his autonomy from other literary phenomena, especially those which – in his opinion – do not deserve the applause they enjoy. It also serves as a diagnosis of the profound, inevitable transformation of literature and culture, towards which an active, creative stance must be taken. It serves as a self-commentary, an author’s reading of a work addressed to the viewer in response to accusations of hermeticism, obscurity, illegibility of this writing (in view of the increasing depreciation of Norwid’s work, self-commentary becomes a tool in the fight for prestige, the fight for recognition of the value of this writing). And finally, Norwid uses the instruments of metaliterature to integrate his creative biography.
Keywords:
Cyprian Norwid, Poezje [Poems] Leipzig 1862, Pięć zarysów [Five Sketches], metaliterature, poetic programmatic statement, literary manifesto, treatise poetry, literary criticism, self-commentary, worldview, social ideasDetails
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