Southern country? Cyprian Norwid’s Italy from the perspective of geopoetics
Southern country? Cyprian Norwid’s Italy from the perspective of geopoetics

Summary/Abstract: This article offers a reflection on Norwid’s discourse about Italy in the context of his narrative about Europe. The symbolic position of Italy on Norwid’s imagined map was a resultant of several perspectives: the North-South opposition, the East-West axis, the categories of centre and peripheries, and it was linked to the universal view from a global and temporal perspective. Each of these perspectives led to other issues (anthropological, cultural, political, economic, civilizational, aesthetic). In the early period of Norwid’s work, Italy’s position was mainly defined by its belonging to the South (at that time its climatic, cultural and aesthetic qualities were stressed). Over time, Italy’s position was increasingly marked on the East-West axis (related mainly to civilizational and political issues). In many of Norwid’s works, Italy was the symbolic centre of the world (with a picture of Rome as the centre of Christianity). Sometimes it was even part of a universal landscape. The evolution of Norwid’s work can be interpreted as the continuous overcoming of the hegemony of one axis or perspective, and consequently, as an attempt to inscribe the image of Italy onto an intricate system of coordinates representing his symbolic imagined map.

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