Czarna magia: dwa tworzywa – jeden wymiar. Pan Cogito Zbigniewa Herberta i René Magritte’a
Black Magic: Two Materials – One Dimension. Zbigniew Herbert’s and René Magritte’s Mr. Cogito

Summary/Abstract: Iwona Mikołajczyk’s article uncovers epistemological similarities between images of the world created by Zbigniew Herbert in the poetic cycle about Mr. Cogito and by René Magritte’s in his surrealistic painterly visions. The analogies are contained not so much in the field of techniques of surrealistic imagery employed by the them (documenting the thesis that only penetration of the subconscious renders human nature) as in their acceptance of Descartes’ view according to which objective description of reality is subordinated to the sum of subjective views. In their attempts to make the inconceivable understandable, the artists, instead of giving the receiver a complete worldview built from individual perceptions, came to a similar conclusion that a man as such is black magic whose consciousness is formed from vague relationships of snatches of reality and fanciful elements. Thus, man lacks harmony and consistency.

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