Najmniejsza powszechność. O Norwidowskiej skali aktywizmu
The Smallest Universality. Norwid’s Scale of Activism

Summary/Abstract: This article attempts a reassessment of Cyprian Norwid’s response to Romantic activism. The model promoted by Norwid himself—the replacement of action (czyn) by labor (praca)—has the disadvantage that it presupposes a vague concept of labor that ultimately refers back to action. This article uses Harold Bloom’s concept of an “internalization” of revolutionary prometheism in late Romanticism to show, by contrast, how Norwid formally downsizes activism. The focus on the “small” allows for a new juxtaposition with the Biedermeier, a distinctive Central European current of the time, in general and Adalbert Stifter’s “gentle law” (das sanfte Gesetz) in particular. This article then takes a closer look at three cases of downscaling in Norwid’s writings: the modeling of action as circle and wheel (koło) in Promethidion (1851) and other writings, the paradoxical demonstration of why God’s omnipotence reveals itself within the realm of the “small” in “Białe kwiaty” (“White Flowers,” 1856–1857) as well as a series of ironic micro-simulations of the “deed from the word” (czyn ze słowa), which are meant to expose conventional Romantic activism as magical thinking.

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