Juliusz Słowacki's Angels

Abstract

The paper has been devoted to the motif of angel in Juliusz Słowacki's mystical poems, with special attention paid to his lyrical poetry written in that period in his work. The initial part of the treatise shows the complications and entanglements within the very angelology and for the good of the treatise it tries to settle certain problems concerning the mysterious figure and nature of the angelic messengers. The next chapter is a polemics with those researchers who in various ways either have ignored or distorted the angelic motif in this poetry by interpreting it rather as a symbol of a metaphor, in this way annihilating the semantic value carried by the word “angel”. The next parts of the paper touch upon the motif of the fiery left angel, and also the motif of cherub in Słowacki's poetry, discussing its theological, biblical and iconographic context, as well as the context of Milton's Paradise Lost. The whole work wants to raise the functional, and first of all the ontological status of Słowacki's angels.