Brzęcząca i migocząca rzeczywistość. Owady w Panu Tadeuszu Adama Mickiewicza
A Buzzing and Shimmering Reality. Insects in Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz

Summary/Abstract: This essay attempts to determine how frequently the motifs related to insects appear in Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz. It also aims to specify the function of these motifs. The initial thesis is that their special role in the poem results from the principle of an analogy between people and insects that encompasses almost all the characters. Accordingly, the world presented is marked by some elusiveness and fragility as well as magic. The motifs analysed in this essay indicate that the poem’s world, while consistent and limited in its territory, timing and culture, consists of a number of interrelated worlds. The first world is the larval reality; the women in the state of transformation, experiencing love. The second world is the world of flies entangled in the tradition of nobility. There also exists the world of nature with its secrets and symbols; yet the majority of the analysed motifs concern man and his culture. The analogies with insects characterise mainly human behaviour. The cases studied confirm the initial thesis that in the presented reality of Pan Tadeusz there is some buzzing, shaking, glimpsing and flapping. This is the volatile world, the world that does not exist, the world whose motion resembles the stillness of dragonflies suspended in the air. It seems it does not express the passing of time but rather the never-ending waiting.

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