{Rozebrana}, czyli Norwidowska ballada o kresie metody alegorycznej
{Undressed} or Norwid’s ballad on the end of the allegorical method

Summary/Abstract: {Undressed}, Cyprian Norwid’s poem written in 1881, defined by himself as ‘a ballade’, for years has bothered many norwidologists interpreting this text. Nevertheless, a particular paradigm of interpreting {Undressed} has been established, as built up by connectable (in the most significant statements) conclusions of scholars such as Michał Głowiński, Stefan Sawicki or lately – Grażyna Halkiewicz-Sojak. The aim of my study is to attempt to reinterpret Norwid’s ‘ballade’ as a lyrical study of a specific aesthetic problem, in other words, as a parabolic and poetised study on the art of allegory, which for Norwid was ‘art passé’. Viewed in this light, peculiar, Norwidian ‘ballade-non-ballade’ seems to give to the reader of the poem knowledge about the waning possibility of allegorisation at the moment of the modern breakthrough. The explication of {Undressed} could be therefore (as well as other, less complicated, explications) the national ‘iconological aporia’. ‘Polish iconoclasm’ i.e. reaching the very limit of national representation, is the pure inability to create the „finite portrait of the fatherland” and the petrification of Poland’s picture by its allegories. Acceptance of such interpretation leads to viewing Norwid’s poem from the perspective set by Stanisław Wyspiański’s {Liberation} and unexpectedly reveals Norwid’s precursory.

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