Echo ruin (The Echo of Ruins), Scherzo, Solo – a graphic trilog on the art of life in Cyprian Norwid’s three lithographs of 1861 (transl. by Tadeusz Karłowicz)

Abstract

The subject of the article is an attempt to look in a new way at three lithographs: The Echo of Ruins, Scherzo and Solo from 1861 as a result of Norwid's cooperation with the Paris workshop Saint-Aubin. Analysis of particular graphic works treated both as individual ones and as a three-part cycle, aims at finding the symbolic message contained in them. Interpretation of erudite compositions referring to both tradition and the sign space contemporary with the poet, in the context of Norwid's conception of art and the artist's views on its place in social life, allow noticing the wealth of their symbolic meaning, comprising at the same time a commentary of the phenomena contemporary with the poet and the dimension of universals.