Zmysły w Balladach i romansach Adama Mickiewicza

Abstract

The article is an attempt to recognize possible roles played in Mickiewicz’s ballads by expressions related to sensory experience. The main emphasis of the considerations is on sight and hearing, i.e. the senses that were most prominently exposed by the poet in his debut book of poetry. What draws one’s attention in Ballady i romanse (Ballads and Romances) is the accumulation of expressions related to senses such as looking, listening, touching as well as the telling lack thereof in negative forms: not listening, not seeing, disappearing, going silent etc. Additionally, it is also numerous commands that come into focus, given by the narrator or the characters and ordering others to listen or look. Yet, sight and hearing do not have for Mickiewicz a purely physiological meaning, inscribed in the sensuality of a man as a biological creature. The poet seeks the boundaries of known receptors and asks about the possibility and the consequences of going beyond them. He also shows the role of the sensual world presented in that way in the process of extrasensory cognition and in the functioning of the ontological, axiological, ethical and eschatological spheres in this context. The senses in Mickiewicz’s poetic collection are a metaphor of the sensitivity of man and a way to learn about his internal life and thusly also a way to revise anthropological concepts in poetry.