Ironia konieczna w twórczości poetyckiej Karola Irzykowskiego

Abstract

The analysis and interpretation of Karol Irzykowski’s poetry conducted in the text reveals his divergent aspects as an artist and a man. Three categories are prominent in the broad range of typical modernist issues: ontology, epistemology, and eschatology as opposed to the weakness of the individual. The most resonant chord of this lyric poetry comprises multifaceted musings on poetry (Horla), love and eroticism, and death, which has been emphasised in the exegesis. Within such bias of the lyrical matter Irzykowski’s work often exposes an ironist’s touch, especially in his reflection inspired by the irony of fate, the ‘hilariousness’ of human existential condition. Irzykowski, through his distinctive ironic distance, ambivalence, and sarcasm, lays bare the unfaltering mechanism of existence in which everything remains contradictory, imperfect, temporally and mortally impure. The poet enforces his lyrical representations with embedded references to the philosophical doctrines of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Hebbel, and thus concludes with the diction of essential irony.