Ogród na rozstajach rzeczywistości i wyobraźni poetyckiej. Metamorfozy Zofiówki
The Garden at the Crossroads of Reality and Poetic Imagination.The Metamorphoses of Zofiówka (Zofia Galvani’s Garden)

Summary/Abstract: Szczęsny Potocki established Zofiówka (Zofia’s Garden) in 1797 as a tribute to his wife Zofia Galvani. Zofiówka owes its charm to an unusual setting. Those who visited it from Humań, the last Polish town of any size, and had behind them the experience of the steppe, were dazzled when they saw this “pearl amid the steppes”. To them Zofiówka seemed an unbelievable, unusual and unexpected miracle. Numerous poets came to Potocki’s park to gain an aesthetic education as if to the Mecca of poetry. The legend and charm of the garden itself were overshadowed by the fame of its portrayal in Sofijówka, the descriptive poem by Stanisław Trembecki. The immense popularity of gardens and poetry about gardens is linked to the “discovery” of nature in the eighteenth century and to the cult of Jacques Delille (1738–1813) in Poland. Zofiówka occupied a special place in the recollections of the romantic poets Bohdan Zaleski and Seweryn Goszczyński. It is interesting how differently they paint the garden of their shared childhood and youthful friendship. The safe park in the classical-sentimental-romantic style, Zaleski’s Eden, a paradise combining Heaven and Earth, is transformed in Goszczyński’s vision into a menacing and terrifying gothic garden – a place combining Earth and Hell.

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