Norwid over “the stream of human blood”

Abstract

The study is devoted to the analysis and interpretation of the motif of human blood, recurrent in Norwid’s work. Our starting point is Norwid’s confession in the poem Czemu nie w chórze?: “Jam widział krew!...” (“1 have seen blood”). The statement breaks the conventions of the Christmas carol, a genre of great importance for Polish culture, evoked by the imagery and the rhythmic pattern of the poem; instead, we get a “carol for joyless times”, another special literary genre. What is more, the statement is a challenge to the nineteenth-century reader. The experience was after all not exceptional in the biographies of the second and third romantic generations, especially in Poland. The motif of blood kept recurring in the century’s art, literature and philosophy of history; treated hyperbolically, especially in patriotic art, it gradually degenerated into the banal. Among Norwid’s texts in which the motif of blood occupies the central place are the letter to Konstancja Górska of May 1862, reporting on the massacres of that time; a passage in the poem Quidam depicting the particularly unheroic scenery of the death of the main character, the son of Alexander of Epirus; and the poet’s account of his trips to the Roman catacombs (where phials containing the blood of the first martyrs were scrupulously preserved), included in Czarne kwiaty. An analysis of these texts reveals certain peculiarities in Norwid’s language, which violates the norms of colloquial language and exceeds the repertory of stylistic devices then recognized by Polish literature. Norwid speaks about blood in a way that no one did; this concerns both phraseology and imagery.

Two areas of human activity are brought in as a context for the interpretation of the blood motif. One is the Polish colloquial language with its turns of phrase employing the word “krew”. What we have to do with here is an aquatic metaphor petrified into phraseology; the consequence is that, despite the adage “blood is thicker than water”, the language user puts an equation sign between the two liquid substances. This leads to the unconscious depreciation of blood in the common axiological system as imposed by the language. The second area is religion, whose rituals invest blood with special significance. Christianity, and Catholicism in the mystery of the Eucharist in particular, regarded the sacrificial blood of Christ as sacred; it reverently collected the blood of the early martyrs; in doing so it indirectly, by bringing out the mystical connection with the sacrifice of God-Man on the cross, tended to attribute sacredness to the blood of each man (or at least of each baptized man). By the side of subtle mystical works meant for a small group of people there arose popular devotional art, which in its lives of saints or martyrs and the accompanying illustrations made hyperbolical use of the motif of blood in order to move its audiences. These things were part of the everyday experience of all Europeans. So were casual notices, appearing almost daily in the nineteenth-century press, about various disturbances and unsuccessful uprisings, or individual executions and suicides.

Norwid’s works acquire a new meaning in the light of J. L. Austin’s reflections on colloquial language. The more so as the author of Rzecz o wolności słowa, like other romanticists, repeatedly (and with varying success) attempted the hermeneutical interpretation of human language; good evidence of this is to be found for example in the lectures O Juliuszu Słowackim. Norwid considered that it was the task of an artist as an “organizer of collective imagination” to bring home to the public the correct system of values. It is in this context that we interpret Norwid’s texts with the blood motif at their centre.

The letter to Konstancja Górska of May 1862 is an example of a mode of speaking about human blood that restores it to its proper dignity (if only by bringing out the inseparable connection of blood with the human body, that is, with human life). This may occasionally lead the poet to violate even the standards of linguistic correctness. The passage in Quidam and the report from the catacombs make us aware of what was to Norwid the only worthy frame of reference for reflection on human blood: the message of the Gospel, so often utterly obliterated in works of popular devotional art or in patriotic poetry.

Norwid’s polemic with the Polish linguistic norms, especially with the phraseology, and with the repertory of means of expression used in artistic and journalistic writings leads him to a dispute with some philosophical conceptions of history. As the guiding image for reflection on human blood nineteen centuries after the death of Christ, one to replace the petrified aquatic metaphor, he proposes the image of “book” together with the related image of “reading”. This new phraseology and imagery directly implies certain axiological and ethical categories. Norwid’s effort to restore the dignity of human blood is part of his broader reflection on the dignity of being human.

Norwid’s works, including those with the blood motif, did not attract the interest of his contemporaries and remained practically unknown. Also the historical circumstances (such as the 1863 uprising and its aftermath) were unfavourable to their profound interpretation. In no small degree, however, it was some elements of Norwid’s own poetic diction that brought on the fail- ure of his attempt to effect a necessary “sharp turn” in the structure of both artistic and colloquial language.

Still, Norwid’s idea does not belong purely to an irrecoverable past. The problem of the dignity of human blood has reappeared in some texts by Bolesław Miciński, such as his essay O nienawiści, okrucieństwie i abstrakcji, and in the work of Zbigniew Herbert (e.g. the poem Pan Cogito myśli o krwi), to name but two examples. Norwid’s “praca w języku” (“work in language”) may be a valuable direction for twentieth-century men. But at this point our thinking acquires a different dimension; it becomes, in the words of Paul Ricoeur, “reflection starting from symbols”.