Obłęd czterech wieszczów – leksemy obłęd i obłąkanie oraz słowa powiązane słowotwórczo w tekstach Adama Mickiewicza, Juliusza Słowackiego, Zygmunta Krasińskiego i Cypriana Norwida
Obłęd (‘madness’) as seen by the four great Polish bards. The lexemes obłęd and obłąkanie, and their derivatives in texts by Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Zygmunt Krasiński, and Cyprian Norwid

Summary/Abstract: In the history of the Polish language, the words obłęd (‘madness’) and obłąkanie (‘insanity’) are etymologically associated with wandering. In the 19th century, these meanings were still alive; at the same time, meanings related to the mental sphere were also forming. In the literature of Romanticism, one can see elements that correspond to the content of the word obłęd used as a term in modern psychiatry. These include, first of all, the structure of delusions that accompany a compact, integrated personality. This is how we can interpret, for instance, the usage of the word in Mickiewicz’s translation of The Dream (the same is true, of course, also for Byron’s original), as well as in Czarne kwiaty by Norwid. Among the noteworthy linguistic facts associated with the studied words in the 19th century is their cognitive ambivalence: on the one hand, madness was associated with special cognitive abilities, on the other, stigmatization of the mentally ill was apparent. Finally, the progressive (also in the Modernist period) increase in the number of uses of these words can be observed, which is likely due to the growing interest in the human psyche in art and its study in medicine.

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