„Jak się to pismo niejasne wykłada”. Z problemów lektury Króla-Ducha

Abstract

The above sketch “How unclearly the language is laid out”. On the problems of reading King-Spirit concerns the reception of the late, famous, unfinished epic by Juliusz Słowacki. It notes the difficulty of reading the work since the publication of the First Rhapsody in Paris in 1847. Contemporaneous readers, artists and literary researchers had problems understanding the work. The aphorism by Zygmunt Krasiński remains famous, who after reading Słowacki’s epic, wrote in a letter to Konstanty Gaszyński: “Either I am a mad reader, or the author that wrote it”. Cyprian Norwid, in the fifth of his Parisian lectures About Juliusz Słowacki in six public meetings called King-Spirit “the darkest poem”. Attempts to understand the poem made by successive publishers and literary historians (including Antoni Małecki, Ignacy Matuszewski, Jan Gwalbert Pawlikowski, Juliusz Kleiner, Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, Alina Kowalczykowa, Marta Piwińska) only confirm that this work, which is Słowacki’s poetic last will and testament, is among “the greatest challenges for more than just Polish literature”.