„Rzeka” u Glogera i „rzeka” u Miłosza – studium porównawcze

Abstract

In this article, we answer the questions: what is a river to both of these authors and how do they speak about it? We look for the answers in their texts. The first thing we notice is an ennoblement of the river – both in Zygmunt Gloger’s, and in Czesław Miłosz’s works. To the author of Dolina Issy (The Issa Valley), a river is an ordering element, a point of reference, which is important in the topography and in the whole universe. Miłosz’s most important river was his native Niewiaża, which became his inspiration for writing many poems as well as for the novel The Issa Valley. The closest river to Gloger was the Narew. Of course, there is more literariness in speaking about the river in Miłosz’s works, albeit forms specific to particular genres may sometimes lead us astray in some of their areas. Admiration for the beauty of nature with a river in the centre links Gloger and Miłosz together. In The Issa Valley, Miłosz evokes rites, folk customs, many a time related to the river, and thus something that was so familiar to Gloger. In Gloger’s works, the river reverberates more ethnographically and didactically, in Miłosz’s – literally, with an entrance into the regions of philosophy, metaphysics. Gloger seems to be saying: “I am a monographer, a describer of rivers”, whereas Miłosz: “I am a worshiper of rivers”.