‘Rzecz czarnoleska’ as perceived by the third generation of romantics: Cyprian Norwid and Teofil Lenartowicz

Abstract

This article offers a synthetic overview of how Jan Kochanowski's artistic legacy manifested itself in the poetry of the third-generation Romantics - Cyprian Norwid and Teofil Lenartowicz. This overview of the work of the two latter poets proves that Czarnolas was perceived by them as an invaluable model of community life in the 19th-century context. The Czarnolas community ideally matched the Romantic reflection on the sense of freedom and the grandeur of the Polish nation – living in the political subjection to the partitioners. Jan Kochanowski and his oeuvre was a vital rediscovery, which allowed the 19th-century restitution of the myth of the Old Polish epoch, with its turning back to the roots of the Polish language and its debate on the fundamental problems of the time. All these motifs feature in the poetry by Norwid and Lenartowicz, who repeatedly made reference to the topos of the Czarnolas lute to show that they credit Kochanowski with being a poet of the nation.