Ciemne świecidła nadziei – starość Józefa Ignacego Kraszewskiego (na przykładzie „Nocy bezsennych”)
A Dark Tinsel of Hope: Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s Old-Age Years (Based on "Noce bezsenne")

Summary/Abstract: I deal in this article with the old-age years of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski. The issue is analysed in the context of sleeplessness and its consequences. The first section discusses the specific ‘sleepy’ language used by Kraszewski – and is an attempt to reconstruct it. In effect, the following symbolic ideas get investigated: elderly man is compared to a stone, to a ruined house and to a symbolic tree – the sign of nature and rebirth ('arbor vitae'). In the second part, focuses on a prayer: It describes the importance of prayer in the building of a senile subjectivity. The third part of the work consists of an analysis of the form of record that Kraszewski’s style as changing as time goes on. A fragmentary nature, non-ordinality and randomness, simultaneously to reflecting the writer’s mode of thinking, become the determinants of the author’s subjective status. The old-age style is a certain code that makes the occurring ‘disintegration of (the) form’ understandable. States of elderly melancholy, despair, sadness, and sometimes stupefaction are elements that form the mental landscape of this experience. From the perspective of diaries, correspondence and also notes, there emerges a peculiar portrait of human suffering, solitude and the old age; the struggle for the sustenance of human subjectivity.

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