Dłoń – podręczny instrument. O przesadzie w interpretacji
The Hand – a Useful Instrument. On Exaggeration in Interpretation

Summary/Abstract: An attempt at deciphering the gesture of a hand featured on a theatre poster designed by Henryk Tomaszewski for the drama Hadrian VII (1969). The introduction briefly recollects the selected functions performed by the hand, with emphasis placed on mnemonics (the art of memory) and chirognomy (chirology). The author went on to analyse the significance of the hand motif on posters by Henryk Tomaszewski and examined their eventual connection with chirognomy and chirology – the ways in which hands speak, i.e. an inseparable element of rhetoric established in antiquity and still applied in the nineteenth century. After the introduction the author advanced ad rem, demonstrating that the gesture shown on the examined poster does not signify the Arabic 7 or the letter H, but is an originally depicted Roman VII indicated by the index finger, here unnaturally elongated due to its function. To conclude: apparently in the case of works by renowned artists classical research methodology proves ineffective.

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