Gościnność poezji na marginesie pieśni uchodźców
Hospitality of Poetry on the Margin of a Song of Exiles

Summary/Abstract: The author starts by recalling that the Polish national anthem – “Jeszcze Polska nie umarła…” (“Poland Is Not Yet Lost”), known also as Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (Dąbrowski\'s Mazurka) – is a song composed by and for exiles. For many of its actual protagonists the words: “Marsz, marsz […] do Polski” (“March, march [...] to Poland”) remained an unfulfilled dream. They died abroad and were buried in foreign graveyards, and now, according to the anthem lyrics, returned to Poland to lead the life (So long as we still live) of phantoms (a life that in many different ways was truly spectral). The author goes on to ask: can a poem offer refuge? Is poetry a form of hospitality? Can it provide asylum, just like Mazurek Dąbrowskiego takes in those exiles-legionnaires interred somewhere in distant lands and long forgotten graves? Instead of a solution – binding and expressed in simple words befitting soldiers – the author suggests two approaches to Polish poems about exiles (in France). The first is: Pogrzeb kapitana Meyznera by Juliusz Słowacki, and the second: Rue de Poitiers by Ryszard Krynicki.

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