„Naród nie lubi negacji”. Wincenty Pol o Juliuszu Słowackim

Abstrakt

• “The people dislike negation”. Wincenty Pol on Juliusz Słowacki
• Wincenty Pol included his brief commentary on Słowacki’s work in lecture XX of Pamiętnik do literatury polskiej XIX w. [Diary to the 19^th century Polish literature] comprising lectures delivered at the Cracow City Hall from 1864. This text is an interesting testimony to the changes in the interpretation of Słowacki’s work, which the Romantics – largely – did not know and did not understand. Słowacki’s works that Pol mentioned include only Jan Bielecki, Żmija [The Viper] and Król-Duch [King-Spirit]. Pol himself admitted his intellectual helplessness, referring in very general terms to the mystical, metaphysical layer of selected works. While in the case of Mickiewicz to whom he had devoted the previous lecture he glorified a brilliant exponent of the period’s consciousness, a truly inspired bard was for him Krasiński, though in the conclusion he did mention Słowacki whom he called a “poet of negation”. It seems that Pol did not understand the attitude according to which the poet created his own image of an artist and played a number of roles that identified him with this image. Since Pol wanted to do the distinguished poet justice, he tried to depict in Pamiętnik an educational process of the evolution of the “Polish spirit” – outside Słowacki’s genesis system.