Tadeusz Miciński i żywioły ironii

Abstract

The author of the article demonstrates the importance of irony for the prose writer, poet and playwright Tadeusz Miciński (1873–1918). He was commonly seen as a writer of sublime and grotesque realism. Up to 1910, his novels were characterized by certain ‘seriousness’, but later he preferred a symbolic and mythical poetics, which was connected with the upcoming revolution in Russia and WW I, and which, as he then hoped, could have helped Poland to regain independence. As can be seen in the edition of his Miscellaneous Writings in four volumes (Białystok 2017–2019), ironic overtones are quite common in his works. In some of them, however, they become dominating elements. The aforesaid edition rediscovers two very important, undeservedly forgotten texts: A Treatise on the Hell Under the Mountain Meadows and White Nights, which can be best classified as ironic essays.