Tytuł w twórczości poetyckiej Bolesława Leśmiana
The Role of Titles in the Poetic Works by Bolesław Leśmian

Summary/Abstract: The structural and semantic analysis concerning a selection of titles given to his poems by Bolesław Leśmian shows that the title constitutes as crucial an element of the text (often marginalized and ignored, though) as all the other exponents of this texts, whether relating to its content or structure. The title functions as the delimiter of the text’s beginning and as a metatext to the text itself. This is because it semantically represents the particular aspects of the text’s content and its genre. At the same time, the title also functions as a proper name, since it is unalterably linked with one and only one, concrete text. Syntactically speaking, Leśmian tends to build his titles in the form of nominative expressions as well as post-modified nominal phrases. He infrequently relies on sentences or verbless clauses. Semantically speaking, Leśmian’s titles perform the following functions: informative, descriptive, poetic, connotative and interpretative. Leśmian's titles are formally simple. This simplicity grants his poems both formal and semantic transparency, but, first of all, it gives depth to the poetic content and its interpretation. On the one hand, Leśmian’s titles are relatively grammatically uncomplicated. On the other, their content is relatively general and metaphorical. This is why his titles help the reader navigate though Leśmian’s poems, but at the same time they prevent the distortion of the original philosophical message of his works.

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