Mademoiselle Corday − the Vicissitudes of Public Poetry in the Epoch of Distrust

Abstract

Starting with defining the place of Panna Corday in Herbert's work the article is first of all a consideration of the situation of poetry treating of moral values and wanting to be recognised as „public” in the era of relativism. Such poetry, representing the authority of „bare discourse”, in the face of the growing cultural „verbalism” resorts to „irony”. The author stresses the educational sense of Herbert's irony preparing the reader for accepting „the appraisal of the rational virtus”, which attitude – in the author's opinion – is the „greatest provocation”. Relating Herbert's work to the current of Polish moralistic poetry from Norwid to Miłosz, he draws the reader's attention to the paradoxical fact that its seemingly outdated status in the epoch of changing literary fashions has a chance to become an avant-garde one.