Milczenie ciał. O wierszu "W prosektorium" Jerzego Żuławskiego w kontekście "Córki Cerery" Juliusza Słowackiego
The silence of bodies. On the poem 'In the Morgue' by Jerzy Żuławski in the context of Juliusz Słowacki’s 'Daughter of Cerera'

Author(s): Marcin Bajko
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Polish Literature, 19th Century, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Słowacki; Żuławski; body; death; silence
Summary/Abstract: The author focused on a little-known poem by the writer and philosopher, author of the famous 'Moonlight Trilogy', Jerzy Żuławski (1874–1915), entitled 'In the Morgue' (written around 1894). In his work, the author expressed a philosophically motivated pessimism; he also questioned existence beyond mortality. The fundamental problem in the analysed work becomes the opposition of body and spirit. In this context, there is also the problem of death, the decay of the body – also its absolute ‘silence’ – as evidence of human decay. A natural context for Żuławski’s way of thinking expressed through poetic images seems to be the late work of Juliusz Słowacki. In Genesisian philosophy the spirit becomes everything, while the body is reduced to a mere prison and shell of the soul. In order to ‘illuminate’ and compare the motifs of silence and the disintegration of the human being in Żuławski’s poem, the author of this article chose one of Słowacki’s intriguing and still secretive poems, the diptych 'Daughter of Cerera' from 1847.

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