„Przeszłość przelotem swój cień zostawiła”. Problematyka pamięci w liryce Władysława Syrokomli. Rekonesans

Abstract

The analysis of Syrokomla’s poetry presented in this article reveals that his understanding of the concept of memory goes far beyond a patriotic imperative. Typically for Romaticism, memory in Syrokomla’s poems is set a historical context, but the poet also explores its social and personal dimension, showing the mechanisms behind the disintegration of individual and collective memory and the ways it can be re-unified. The article draws the attention to the dichotomy apparent in Syrokomla’s poetry between the need for remembering and, on the other hand, the continuous process of forgetting memories. These two sides of the same coin translate into the division into the memory of marble and the memory of stone juxtaposed with the memory in the brain and the memory in the heart. This seems to correspond to what has been currently discussed as reference memory and archival memory. As for the way memory works, Syrokomla valued emotions and senses (seen as a fuel for fiction) over intellect (seen as an attribute of historical narrative). In his memoryscape, the poet was particularly fond of the parts related to home and identified them as equal to the natural, historical, social and mental landscape.