"Anhelli" – pamięć i tożsamość
"Anhelli" – Memory and Identity

Author(s): Wacław Pyczek
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Romanticism; Juliusz Słowacki; Anhelli; Siberia; exile; memory; identity
Summary/Abstract: The character of the hereby presented essay is an aspectual interpretation of Juliusz Słowacki’s narrative poem Anhelli, where the perspective of observation is set by the category of memory viewed in the context of identity. Memory motifs, important in the epoch of Romanticism, perform a significant and complex role in the described narrative poem. They are present in numerous layers of the literary work. First of all, they determine the nature and destiny of literary characters, they also shape the narrative mode, the image of the historic and religious alignment of the literary work. For the author of the presented considerations it was more important to concentrate upon the existential contexts than the political ones, so often underlined earlier. The presented interpretation of the Siberian narrative poem memory was pointed out as a value and, at the same time, a factor forming the identity of the characters and especially the title character. Complexity of the topic is revealed in the very multitude of memory types – narrative (biographical and autobiographical), intimate, individual, collective and also biblical. Introducing the particular categories and their description allowed determining more closely the layers of the basic meanings of the narrative poem and also the image of the exile culture marked with the tragic stigma.

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