"Cary" – odgłos kary, czyli u źródeł Mickiewiczowskiej symboliki politycznej i strategii antyimperialnego oporu
'Cary' – the Sound of Punishment: At the Source of Adam Mickiewicz’s Political Symbolics and Anti-Imperial Strategy of Resistance

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the cryptopolitical message contained in the ballad 'Świteź', as conveyed by the legendary tale about a flooded city and a plant growing on the lake’s shores that brings death to invaders. The author points to Mickiewicz’s significant innovation in using the classical aitiological theme in the poetic derivation of the plant’s name cary and the significant role of the ballad in the evolution of the motif of 'revenge after death' in the poet’s work. The ballad itself is considered an original locus of production of politically subversive symbolism in Mickiewicz’s oeuvre: connected to the use of Aesopian language and expressing anti-imperial resistance. The author also notes the puzzling absence of the political symbolism of Mickiewicz’s cary in Polish culture and points to an interesting contemporary analogy in the field of 'floral' symbolism of political resistance – one originating in the current war in Ukraine and referring to the same enemy as in the ballad.

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