Młodzieńcze eksperymenty Józefa Korzeniowskiego z formą dramatyczną
Józef Korzeniowski’s Youthful Experiments with the Subjectivity of Dramatic Form

Summary/Abstract: The status of Józef Korzeniowski’s early dramas oscillates around the historical and literary syntheses of his works (the first of which date back to the 1840s) between a modest position of a technical “rehearsal” and a high rank of an innovative dramatic form. Paradoxically, while the old “defensive” reviews do not sound credible today, the “accusatory” statements – when deprived of their judgmental conclusions – offer inspiring suggestions. They are supported by a superior category of lyricism. Yet, it is not the lyricism that institutes the dramatic genre of the lyrical stage (as the first critics sympathetic to the poet desired), but the lyricism that is expressed in the subjectivity of statements (with the voices written out, yet conflict-ridden by the consequences of actual past actions, not in the sphere of current experiences), in the elegiac mood of personal reflections, and finally in such projection of reception that was expected even by the normative poetics of classicism for lyrical forms, and even for their variations most toned down in meaning and most personal in content. From this perspective, the series of Korzeniowski’s early dramas show evidence of his gradual resignation from a brave experiment for the sake of an awkwardly constructed form of drama following the “regulations.”

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