Professor Bogdan Zakrzewski on Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki
The main objective of the article is to present Prof. Bogdan Zakrzewski’s interest in the life and oeuvre of the two leading writers of Polish Romanticism — Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki. Following a chronological order, the author presents Professor Zakrzewski’s most importantacademic and popular works devoted to the two luminaries of Polish literature. However, she does not create a simple bibliography, but by analysing the content of the works as well as Zakrzewski’s research method — which consists in showing the poets within the circle of “real matters” and, at the same time, entering the everyday existence of Mickiewicz the man and Mickiewicz the poet and by analogy Słowacki the man and Słowacki the poet — tries to reconstruct the unique portraits of the authors of Pan Tadeusz and Król-Duch that emerge from Zakrzewski’s monographs and articles. Despite various adversities Zakrzewski’s Mickiewicz is joyful, enthusiastically producing successive verses of Pan Tadeusz and sneaking out with Bohdan Zaleski for a glass of porter. On the other hand, Słowacki primarily in his Wrocław period in 1848 is a tragic figure — constantly experiencing mystical raptures, the poet-apostle could not muster any earthly affection for his mother or for the “Karkonosze shepherdess”, Zofia Mielęcka. A separate part of the article is devoted to the presentation of Zakrzewski’s research method as well as his personal predispositions making him an expert scholar and outstanding humanist. The readers were always the most important for Professor Zakrzewski, who never overwhelmed them with too much commentary, but encouraged them to formulate their own conclusions on the basis of the source material presented to them.