Nokturny. Popielny żar wiersza i diamentowy
The Ashen and Diamond Fervour of the Poem

Summary/Abstract: After reading the book by Paweł Próchniak we become aware of the nature of the nocturne (something that I always sensed while listening to Chopin). The subtitle: Z dziejów wyobraźni poetyckiej (From the History of Poetical Imagination) comprises the dark yarn of this imaginary weave. More, it becomes part of the sensu largo series in which the book was issued, i.e. Granice wyobraźni (Limits of Imagination). Indeed, while reading Nokturny we touch and sometimes trespass or even cross those boundaries in poetry. It sometimes happens that we do so in a totally unexpected manner: after all, who actually thinks on a daily basis about the Polish national anthem: Jeszcze Polska nie umarła (Poland Is Not Yet Lost) as a “song of exiles”. It suffices to reason in this manner in order to arrive at the boundaries not only of mere individual imagination but also a collective imaginarium. The publishing house, which issued Próchniak’s book, is named Pasaże – after the passages of Baudelaire and Benjamin. Already the very composition of this extremely intentionally devised volume of sketches reveals how passages of the imagination are not at odds with the boundaries of the imagination. This is why I regard the longest essay in the volume – an interpretation of De passage à Paris, an excellent and unacknowledged poem by Stanisław Baliński – to be a significant composition caesura of Nokturny. The poem in question, a distant reflection of Czarne kwiaty (Black Flowers) by Norwid (also because it deals with the constant instability of the fate of an émigré), attempts to capture signals of the dying of Frederic Chopin before death actually takes place. To capture the moment of passage, which becomes a borderline, also imaginary.

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