Mowa Starca w I części "Dziadów": krótka nota o dwu powiązanych kontekstach
The old man’s speech in "Dziady" [Forefathers’ Eve] part 1: a short note on two related contexts

Author(s): Jerzy Fiećko
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Old Man; Dziady; nature of human fate; Arthur Schopenhauer; The World as Will and Representation; absolute pessimism;
Summary/Abstract: The author analyses the speech produced by the Old Man – one of the characters from Mickiewicz’s unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime drama "Dziady" [Forefathers’ Eve] Part I. The speech includes a pessimistic interpretation of the nature of human fate from the existential and metaphysical point of view. At the same time the author examines this particular part of the drama in terms of reoccurrence of nihilist elements and in the last part of this paper the author compares concepts the Old Man puts forward in his speech with the fundamental ideas Arthur Schopenhauer outlines in his philosophical treatise "The World as Will and Representation" (1819). The analysis is concluded with a question implying a thesis that the Old Man’s worldview coincides with the idea of an ‘absolute pessimism’ convention better than Schopenhauer’s philosophy itself.

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