Upojenie i melancholia. „Sztuka w zaścianku” Jacka Malczewskiego
Intoxication and Melancholy: "Art in the Backwater" by Jacek Malczewski

Summary/Abstract: The article is a voice in the discussion on the interpretation of Jacek Malczewski’s painting Sztuka w zaścianku (Art in a backwater). The author, referring to the Nietzschean interpretation of art presented in The Birth of Tragedy, focuses on the motif of artistic initiation, the question of the nature and sources of creation, the artist’s mission and doubts. She emphasizes the peculiar correspondence between the poetics of folk ballads, revealing supernatural reality, and Mediterranean myths. Art, seen as a metaphysical act, an eternal, primordial, inexhaustible force, as Malczewski shows – arises and revives not only under the Greek sky, but also in a backwater devoid of any sun. The Polish symbolist shares with the German philosopher a longing for the lost power of creating the spiritual world, the mystery of myth, which pacifies the horror and chaos of existence. The figure of the faun, popular in modernist poetry, is in Malczewski’s view a figure of the artist-dreamer, but also a sign of melancholy, uncertainty of modern human.

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