Księżyc nad miastem
The Moon over the City

Oriental Vilnius in Juliusz Słowacki’s Early Poems

Author(s): Agnieszka Górska
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Juliusz Słowacki; The Moon; Vilnius; Aladdin; memory
Summary/Abstract: This article is devoted to the city of Vilnius represented in the early poem "Księżyc" (“The Moon”) by Juliusz Słowacki. The image of the city is evidently inspired by one of the first books he read, "The Arabian Nights", particularly by the story of Aladdin and his enchanted lamp. In the 18th and 19th centuries "The Arabian Nights" were one of the most important books in Europe, especially their French translation by Antoine Galland, a French orientalist. Słowacki, having drawn on the story of Aladdin, represented Vilnius as fairy-tale-like place, full of wonders and oriental delights. The memory of his home town was connected to the city illumination in 1822. The poet as a teenage boy perceived the city lights and the thousands of lanterns as an extraordinary and fairy-tale-like event. Słowacki’s memory of the illuminated city intertwined with the memory of the book he had read in his childhood. In this lyrical description of the city an important feature of Słowacki’s memory already became noticeable: for the poet a veristic view was not as important as the view seen in his imagination inspired by the Arabian tales.

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