EN
The article investigates the names of ancient gods featuring in Stanisław Wyspiański’s plays, which are treated here as examples of quasi-personal nouns. The first part of the paper introduces the theoretical research assumptions which were taken to examine the meaning of words used in artistic language. Special reference is made to A. Okopień-Sławińska’s semantic concepts and J. Bartmiński’s model of cognitive definition. The second part attempts to describe the idiolectal semantics of the analyzed words by examining their textual collocations. It is found that the poet duplicated the literary and cultural stereotypes about gods, albeit using at the same time very sophisticated and vivid imagery, based on a play of light and colour. Moreover, Wyspiański used the names of gods to create extraordinary poetic images relating to the Polish history.