Tradycja barokowa w "Agaj-Hanie"

• Authors: Agata Seweryn

Title variants

Baroque tradition in Agaj-Han

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

Agaj-Han is an interesting and important example of long-standing baroque tradition in the literature of Polish Romanticism. Krasiński employs several conventions known from heroic epic poems (Jerusalem liberated by Tasso-Kochanowski), memoirs (The Momoirs of Jan Chryzostom Pasek), baroque iconography, erotic, metaphysical and Counter-Reformation poetry. Frenetic imagination of the Romantic writer is deeply rooted in the seventeenth century frenzy. It has much in common with Baroque fascination with death and corporeality not only in its flourish, but also in destruction and decay. Vanitas in Krasiński's works occurs, most often, in tandem with Worldly Pleasure, the same as in moralistic literature of the Baroque period, especially in its Counter-Reformation stream. Theatricality (topos of life as a battle, theatrum mundi), the use of light effects, imagery of labyrinth in Agaj-Han brings to mind the Baroque period's penchant for illusion related to vanitas and oneirism forming the presented world of the novel. Orientalism in the works of Krasiński and his ambivalence towards the man of the East also has baroque roots. The ambivalence is mainly reflected in the creation of the main character, compared in the novel to a snake, who simultaneously fascinates like Rousseau's Peacock. The Polish Commonwealth in Agaj-Han was presented as antemurale, and a snake, apart from an oriental rug, became the symbol of Romantic Orientalism in Poland.

Keywords

EN

Agaj-Han; baroque; Zygmunt Krasiński; orientalism

• Publisher: Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk w Przemyślu
• Journal: Rocznik Przemyski
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 48
• Issue: 2: Literatura i Język
• Pages: 73-104

Contributors

author

Agata Seweryn

Identifiers

ISSN

0137-4168