Raptularz Wschodni: Jerozolimy ziemskie Juliusza Słowackiego

Abstract

The article’s author analyzes the Eastern Raptularius written by Polish Romantic poet Juliusz Słowacki (1809-1849). Considered lost during World War II, the Eastern Raptularius was found in 2005 in a Russian archive in Moscow and published in a three-volume edition in Warsaw in 2009. It is a source for studying Słowacki›s travels through Italy, Greece, and across the Mediterranean to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. During this trip, Słowacki, as the article’s author points out, must have come into contact with the world of the Jews. During this period, the poet returned to reading the Bible. His special interest, as confirmed by notes in the Eastern Raptularius, was aroused by the figure of Moses and the motif of escape from Egypt, the land of slavery to the homeland (Canaan). In the East, Słowacki repeatedly returns to this figure and the motif, and mentions the “old Hebrews.” As the article’s author believes, it was after returning from the journey, which Słowacki called “a pious wandering (...) to Jerusalem,” that the Jewish world appears in his works to a greater extent, for example, in the drama Priest Mark (1841).