Wyobrażeniowa poetyka zła w utworach Voltaire’a
The Poetics of Evil and its Imagery in Voltaire’s Works

Summary/Abstract: In his descriptions of this “world going round”, Voltaire touches upon the problem of evil, using mimesis and his trademark irony as tools. Scream, anxiety, and confusion over this “scandal for philosophers” are reflected in his polemics with Leibniz. The spectacle of evil presents itself in Voltaire’s symbolic caricature of marionettes – in order to confront the ontological onus of evil with philosophical speculation. h e mechanical descriptions, deformed characters, and grotesque juxtaposition of lucky and unlucky situations found in his “obsessive metaphors” make up his “aesthetics of ugliness”, whose attractive quality seems to unravel some of Voltaire’s myth. His “obsessive metaphors” of evil and his style negating the reality, world, and man create a theatre of nihilism and hopelessness in which Voltaire co-suffers with his actors. The tragic and the comic are wed in the oxymoron of irony – the mood of the spirit – under the mask of which Voltaire hides the secrets of his imagination.

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