"Balladyna" Juliusza Słowackiego w estetycznych kontekstach epoki. Genologia – koncepcja piękna – Idee

Abstract

The subject of the dissertation is “Juliusz Slowacki's Balladyna in the Aesthetic Contexts of the Epoch: Genology – Concepts of Beauty – Ideas”. The work of one of Poland's most prominent poets has been provoking researchers for 178 years to discover its beauty depicted in the form of a space bordering on Lake Gopło. The basic premise of the dissertation was to examine the relationship between the aesthetics and genology of the text, and the vision of the universum. Mythical character, fantasy, gothicism, aesthetics of the North, faustism, irony, tragedy, bible motifs, and multi-genre form contribute to – and that is confirmed by many studies – the artistic texture of Balladyna. All this is a source of inspiration, and at the same time the arena of the basic sense of the work, understood as the multilevel story of man and the world in which the events of "here and now" open up to eternity, to the perspective of transcendence. The author of the dissertation reached for tools from the circle of broadly understood humanities. The point of departure was literature, hence the presence of the research in the field of 20th-century poetry, theory of literary genres and theory of literature in the dissertation. However, to understand the literature as best as possible, it is necessary to have historiosophic, philosophical and psychological knowledge. The dissertation consists of 5 chapters: 1) The aesthetic genesis of the work, 2) The genre. Interpretations. Aesthetics, 3) Aesthetic components of the presented world. Inspirations, 4) Multi-genre form of Balladyna 5) Man according to Slowacki. Each chapter is divided into several subchapters. In the first chapter of the dissertation, its author undertook to describe the aesthetic genesis of the work with attention to four genetic factors: 1) the Shakespearean and Ariostatic context, 2) Homer's ideal, 3) religious songs, 4) Zygmunt Krasiński's figure. Analyzing the sources of the aesthetic inspiration referred to in the research on Balladyna the author adopted a comparative approach. In the second chapter, the author presents detailed analyzes and interpretations of Balladyna concerning the genre determinations of this text. In research on the typology and description of the structure of individual genres contributing to Słowacki's work,the author made use of the achievements of research on the genre of romantic drama. The second and third subchapters discussed the main lines of interpretation and the current findings regarding aesthetics of the work. In the third chapter of the dissertation, the author presented the aesthetic heterogeneity of the text, in which the mythical character (folk, literary, oriental), fantasy (fairy and demonological), gothicism, aesthetics of the North, faustism, and biblical motifs overlap. It was necessary to create a new quality - "irony-tragedy" to describe the Cosmos near Gopło Lake. This is an aesthetic category with portrayed characters of Balladyna in an ontological context. The incessant coincidence of tragic and ironic code in life of the characters resulted in a derivational structure interpreted directly from the essence of the world of the presented work. In the next chapter, the author examined the problem of multi-genre form of Balladyna which cannot be confined to the normative framework of genology, because the world of structured classification categories and the structure of the tragedy near Gopło Lake are exclusive. On the other hand, Słowacki's work constitutes a theoretical metastatement within the scope of genology. It is also a multi-genre form in which ontological issues come to the fore. The final chapter dealt with the image of man and the cosmos in which the Absolute manifests itself. The most attention the author devotes to Balladyna, who appears on the scene in several disguises: upside-down Faust, tragic heroine, romantic heroine, actress and director, angelic-diabolic construction, complex monolith, fearful woman and woman fleeing her own femininity. In addition to Balladyna's creation, chapter five, presented the images of men – Kirkor, Kostryn, Filon, Pustelnik and Grabiec as well as a picture of the poet-creator and fantastic metaplan character. In conclusions, the dissertation's author again indicated the role of ironytragedy – a new aesthetic category – and emphasized the role of imagination as a type of romantic spirituality, primacy of the truth of the "I" of the poet over the truth of "historian", and the importance of looking in the mirror of the other – Krasiński. The author of the dissertation believed that for further research on Balladyna it would be advisable to provide a more accurate analysis of its linguistic layer. It is also worth considering whether (and how) German early Romanticism, for example through French culture, could penetrate into Slowacki.