Ironiczna starość. Przewrotne fauny i satyrowie młodopolskich poetów

Abstract

The work aims at presenting one of the models of faun-like character functioning in the Young Poland poetry. This is the character of the old Pan, satyr or faun, but presented in an ironic situation. This motif is found in works by numerous artists, both well-known and forgotten. The analysis covers the following poems: The Elderly Faun [Faun podstarzały] by Leopold Staff, In Front of the Painting [Przed obrazem] by Janina Lisowska, From the Summer Vapours Born the Goddess… [Z oparów letnich zrodzona boginka…] by Zdzisław Kleszczyński, The Satyr and the Naiad [Satyr i Najada] by Józef Stanisław Wierzbicki, I am the Satyr [Ja jestem satyr] by Wacław Rolicz-Lieder, Henryk Zbierzchowski’s sonnets The Faun [Faun] and The Humorous Poem [Humoreska] and The Captured Nymph [Schwytana nimfa] by Zofia Dębicka. In all the discussed works, old age is a condition that is, at the least, suspect, as if it is a mask that aims at excusing the character. The Pan, Satyr and Faun represent two attitudes: some of them are passive observers (poems Staff, Kleszczyński, Wierzbicki, Rolicz-Lieder), while some of them are active participants in the events (poems by Lisowska, Zbierzchowski, Dębicka). Each of them is "strange" in some way, reacts differently, maybe in a somehow unpredictable way as for the age and a god with goat horns. The environment or the circumstances have some influence. We move from the stoic contemplation (Staff), through instinctive reactions (Lisowska) as well as internal unsteadiness and feverish excitement (Kleszczyński, Wierzbicki, Rolicz-Lieder), to violence and vengeance (Zbierzchowski, Dębicka). As can be seen, old age is not a condition limited to a single meaning.