Infernalne wizje przestrzeni miejskich w twórczości Juliusza Słowackiego

Abstract

The article concerns infernal visions of urban spaces in the work of Julius Słowacki. The author draws attention to the changes brought by the modernist industrial revolution in the times in which the Polish poet lived. In the mirror of his literary texts, urban space turns out to be not only a natural place for human activity, but above all a situational background for many of his existential reflections. The analysis of the collected material allows us to conclude that, contrary to all assumptions, Słowacki, when showing the present and future fate of the world, used the most famous and recognizable images from old literature, such as the Divine Comedy. The metaphor of genius loci, which the poet used to describe, among others, Warsaw, London and Paris, functions both in the topographic and metaphysical space of the presented world. Thanks to it, the poetica creation of the interior of the human soul is a reflection of the vision of the universe from Dante’s poem, and above all, its hellish regions. The city became a place where people could experience moments of the greatest fall and hope, as well as moments of the highest spiritual illumination. This ambivalent symbolic interpretation of the polis is best seen in the example of biblical Jerusalem. The symbol of the city served Słowacki, as in the Divine Comedy, as an archetype of the antinomian structure of the world; city of God and city of earth. Hence, the dichotomous image of the biblical city became the source of many poetic metaphors, allusions and analogies. It seems that of all the cities, the capital of France had the greatest influence on the poetics and manner of imagery in Słowacki’s work. Paris is a symbol of the land that is farthest from God. Paradoxically, Dantes’ vision of the world shows that it is from the bottom of hell that the view of the heavenly firmament extends. Similarly, infernal Paris seems to be a place that becomes a key clue in the context of God’s plan. Ultimately, this is where – according to Słowacki – an apocalyptic clash between the forces of good and the forces of evil was to take place, so that the „Blue Jerusalem” could be reborn on the ruins of the „fallen Jerusalem”. In this paradigm of understanding the world order, its spiritual development is encoded on the path to self-realization of humanity, and the spatial structure of the city in this multi-stage cosmic pilgrimage perfectly illustrates this.