The author of the article aims to add his voice to the debate (fundamental for the studies of Norwid) on the tangled historical and literary origin of Cyprian Norwid and methods of legitimising it: the romantic and modernist. Although the text is clearly seeking a new language to talk about Norwid’s association with the subsequent modernist era (to describe Norwid’s case the author uses the term “fuzzy modernism,” while calling the poet himself “ an eschatologist of modernism,” distinct in this respect from the apparently similar Fyodor Dostoyevsky – modernist eschatologist), the ultimate conclusion is the Polish poet should be placed in the contaminated trend. Also suggested is a need for a study of his literary works that would provide a double model of the nineteenth background of Norwid’s text: as romantic, and at the same time modernist. As a symbol of Norwid’s modernity’s the author chooses London’s Crystal Palace, a place that Norwid (like Dostoyevsky) visited between 3 and 13 December 1852.
The author of the article aims to add his voice to the debate (fundamental for the studies of Norwid) on the tangled historical and literary origin of Cyprian Norwid and methods of legitimising it: the romantic and modernist. Although the text is clearly seeking a new language to talk about Norwid’s association with the subsequent modernist era (to describe Norwid’s case the author uses the term “fuzzy modernism,” while calling the poet himself “ an eschatologist of modernism,” distinct in this respect from the apparently similar Fyodor Dostoyevsky – modernist eschatologist), the ultimate conclusion is the Polish poet should be placed in the contaminated trend. Also suggested is a need for a study of his literary works that would provide a double model of the nineteenth background of Norwid’s text: as romantic, and at the same time modernist. As a symbol of Norwid’s modernity’s the author chooses London’s Crystal Palace, a place that Norwid (like Dostoyevsky) visited between 3 and 13 December 1852.
London’s Crystal Palace, the site of the first international exhibition in 1851 and the architectural symbol of modernity, was widely imitated not only in Europe. Sydney also had its crystal palace. The Australian Garden Palace, similarly to the ones in London, New York and Munich, burnt to the ground in 1882. In 2016 aboriginal artist Jonathan Jones tried to restore it in Australia’s collective memory. However, Jones’ project, barrangal dyara (skin and bones), introduces a postcolonial perspective and recoveres the narratives that were repressed in White Australia, with the hope of working through the common past.
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