What a Strange Creature of Fog and Jelly – the Uncertainty of the Existence of Słowacki's Goplana

Abstract

Goplana, as a protagonist of Słowacki's Balladyna, seems to be underestimated by literary scholars, when her influence of the development of the plot in the drama is described. The article is supposed to address this issue by starting from an analysis of the figure of the water nymph living on the shore of Lake Gopło, then showing what is left in her of a dangerous demon and how much she is inscribed in the model of the Romantic la belle dame sans merci. It turns out that creating the figure of Goplana Słowacki selected the features of the nymph, choosing the motifs that had already been worked out in literature and intertwining them in new contexts, owing to which he made the comic and grotesque character of the protagonist more acute, and also he pointed to her tragic situation – the world, in which she lived, did not accept her existence, which may be treated as one of the reasons why the demonic nature that a water nymph should have faded away. The consequences cannot be overestimated. Relieved of the burden of a nymph's duties she “disturbs people's actions”; in the article an attempt is made to show how and why she does it.