O liryku Adama Mickiewicza "Drzewo" w nawiązaniu do romantycznego owadoznawstwa
On Adam Mickiewicz’s lyric drzewo [A Tree] in reference to romantic entomology

Author(s): Ewa Szczeglacka-Pawłowska
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: poem; Drzewo; Paris at Collège de France; transformation; poetic images; caterpillar; metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly; Romantic entomology; Eros and Psyche; Lucius Apuleius Madaurens
Summary/Abstract: The article contains a vast analysis of the poem "Drzewo" [A Tree] that was published posthumously. The poem is examined in the context of Adam Mickiewicz’s lecture, which the poet gave in Paris at Collège de France on June 17, 1842. It is highly probable that the lyric was written in the same time as this lecture. The text of the lecture opens up new possibilities for the interpretation of the poem. A Tree shows the transformation by means of poetic images, in which a caterpillar appears. The poem clearly sketches, though not explicitly depicts, the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. This interpretation leads us to a network of meanings from Romantic entomology to Mickiewicz’s way of reading the story about Eros and Psyche in Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis’s version.

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