O ironii w Biesach Marii Komornickiej

Abstract

The paper focuses on the so far unexplored presence of irony in Maria Komornicka’s long poem Devils. As it is demonstrated, within the fabric of Komornicka’s text, which abounds in autobiographical sincerity and unrestrained straightforwardness, there lurks irony, or at least the possibility thereof. Its ‘broken’ subject, full of ambivalence and disharmony, assumes sometimes an attitude, which, to quote from Kierkegaard, we can call an “infinite and absolute negativity.” The paper explores a subtle network of ironic tensions between ‘I’ and the world, between the speaking subject and the subject being spoken about, between “I’ and ‘Not-I,’ and between a Prototype and a Partly-Born. The author highlights the fact that in contrast to the ironic subject in Kierkegaard’s writings, the heroine of Komornicka’s poem remains estranged not only from the here and now, but that her transcendental being seems an infinite supplementation of the harmed spirit. Thus, the existential irony is expanded to include the metaphysical irony. Komornicka’s poem unveils not only the core of tragic existential experience, but also an ironic aspect of nothingness, which lines the world.