Myth and mythologizing in Norwid’s painting the Siberian.Reconnaissance

Abstract

The article examines the myth of Siberia in Norwid’s lectures On Juliusz Słowacki and in the poem Siberias, which provides more context. Analysis employs three theoretical perspectives – Mircea Eliade’s phenomenology of myth, anthropological functionalism and Roland Barthes’s concept of myth – to demonstrate that similarly to his predecessors Norwid craved for a living myth and created a Siberian mythology he would regard as pragmatic and functional. Its goal was to organize the community and give shape to a nation deprived of statehood. This function was to be played by a Siberian mythology, which surpasses ethnocentrism by pointing to Christianity as the mythical core capable of uniting European culture. Interpretations of Słowacki’s Anhelli and Norwid’s poem Siberias reveal the metaphorical image of Siberia spilled all over the world. The actual geographical location, entangled in current political realities, is used by the poet as material for his mythical narrative, or a second-order semiological system, as Barthes defined myth.