Des hallucinations forestières. Essai sur l’imaginaire de Bolesław Leśmian
The forestry delusions. The essey of Boleslaw Lesmian’s imaginary

Summary/Abstract: The biography of Boleslaw Lesmian (1877–1937) shows a maladjustment of artist to reality. The Poet escapes to the world of imagination — an alternative reality where he could be settled. In Boleslaw Lesmian’s imaginary the human way leads to the archetypal forest. The image of the forest, implanted deeply in culture as a place for outlaws (Robin Hood), fugitives (Tristan and Isolde) and knights-errant (Parsifal) is transformed by Lesmian. In the Lesmian’s imaginary the forest takes a new semantic dimension and becomes one of the main symbols as the Epiphany of the Mother Earth (Tellus Mater, Pammetor Ge). The analyses, presented in this article, shows that act of wandering in the forest paths is the symbol of a human way which leads to self-knowledge. For Lesmian, who was lost in everyday life, an archetypal figure of Mother Earth has an important therapeutic value. A methodological framework for the discussion is based on the concepts offered by Gilbert Durand, a French philosopher of culture. Anthropology of imagination as a method of literary studies focuses on mundus imaginalis of the author, understood as a manifestation of symbolic powers of imagination and the artist is perceived as an imaginative phenomenon. In the anthropological and myth-critical studies a canonical definition of myth is adopted after Gilbert Durand, where myth is a dynamic system of symbols (mythical figures), archetypes and imagery constituting narrations permanently incorporated into the culture. In Durand’s perspective, mythical figure (figure mythique) is an archetype imagery (image archétype) capable of being expressed at the language level. Imagination is understood as the Consciousness Breeding Imagery. Imagery provide a structure capable of transformations, enabling decomposition and transformation of imagery in cultural texts and their literary palingenesis.

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