Niewinni czarodzieje, guślarze, dziady – poezja jako wywoływanie duchów
Innocent Wizards, Sorcerers, Forefathers: Poetry as an Invocation of the Spirits

Summary/Abstract: For Tomasz Jędrzejewski, the four parts of Adam Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve represent developmental stages of one single work, a Romantic version of a work in progress. Grodzki, meanwhile, avoids analysing the Judaeo-Christian elements and reads Forefathers’ Eve as rooted in the pagan folklore tradition that eventually became “a microcosm of Polish Romanticism”. The focus is on the figure of the Sorcerer, the subversive leader in charge of the ritual that links this world with the supernatural, the living with the dead. Grodzki argues that in Mickiewicz’s oeuvre, Forefathers’ Eve is more than a dramatic poem. It is a metaphor for the play as such and for a particular way of practicing literature – literature that transforms into a magical practice, a sort of literary-cultural ritual of regaining coherence between contemporary times and history, a ritual that enriches the national ghostscape by adding undogmatic elements of spirituality.

• Details
• Contents