„Pamiątki kochanka”. Próby utrwalania uczuć w kilku wierszach wileńsko-kowieńskich
„Lover’s keepsakes”. Attempts to preserve feelings in several poems from the Vilnius-Kaunas period

Author(s): Jerzy Borowczyk
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: sonnet; Przypomnienie; poem; Do malarza; Do M***; Maria Puttkamerowa; human feelings; feelings; emotions; act of writing; verbalizing feelings; affects; meta-literary reflections
Summary/Abstract: The paper analyses three poems and two entries (an album entry and a dedication) by Adam Mickiewicz written during his Vilnius-Kaunas period (1817-1824). These are: the writings include a sonnet "Przypomnienie" [Reminiscence], poems "Do malarza" [To a Painter] and "Do M*** Wiersz napisany w 1823 rok" [To M*** A Poem written in 1923] as well as an entry in Maria Puttkamerowa’s album and a dedication for her in the second poetry collection by Mickiewicz. The selected compositions do not belong to any bigger poetic entireties which makes it possible to examine how in these isolated texts the poet seeks to answer the question of what is happening with human feelings. The affect theory (A. Green, I. Armstrong) has enabled to analyse the tensions that come to the surface in the selected poems and strains that occur between feelings and emotions on the one hand and the reason and the act of writing on the other. It turns out that by using the category of memory as well as meta-literary reflections, Mickiewicz makes an attempt at verbalizing feelings, even though he is aware that the full victory of poetry over affects is neither desirable nor possible.

• Details
• Contents