Człowiek w płomieniach. Mityczna wyobraźnia Artura Pałygi
Humans in Flames: Arthur Pałyga’s Mythical Imagination

Summary/Abstract: Kopciński discusses the work of Polish playwright Artur Pałyga (b. 1971), especially Powrótbogów [The Return of the Gods, 2017], a collection of plays that draw on different poetics(oratorium, dramatic poem, mysterium, poetic monodrama). For Pałyga, the source of the gods’ return is not tradition or history but the human need to encounter the non-human– the archaic myth reactivated in the characters’ liminal situations (death, disease, selfsacrifice,spiritual loneliness), as well as the playwright’s experience of trying to identifywith the speaker of a dramatic text. Kopciński suggests that Pałyga’s characters strive towards a form of absolute being that recalls the notion of the sacred proposed byhistorian of religion Mircea Eliade (1907–1986). The archaic symbol connecting the characters’ experience is fire (flame, spark, solar heat, lethal radiation). Kopciński’s analysis of Pałyga’s mythical imagination focuses on the transformations of this symbol.

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