Norwid's Melancholy Lyricism. Between the „Black Suite” and the Solo Lithograph

Abstract

The article aims to investigate the category of melancholy in Norwid's work. The author's point of departure is the lithograph Solo, made in 1861, which he begins by placing in the context of visual representations of melancholy: from Dürer's celebrated Melancolia I to the Romantic images of the melancholy of the world due to Caspar David Friedrich. The author then goes on to compare these motifs with Norwid's lyrical poems such as the sonnet Samotność [`Solitude'], the two poems called Moja piosnka [`My song'] I and II, Epos-nasza [`Our epic'] and the so-called „black suite”. The author demonstrates traits in common between Norwid's representations of melancholy and its Romantic understanding (solitude, sadness, impression of a disintegrating world, urge for self-destruction, predilection for vanitas motifs, and abandonment of the allegorical representation of melancholy in favour of symbolic presentations of its effects).

Taking into consideration its biographical context, the author argues that the melancholy reflected in Norwid's work accompanied the poet throughout his life. What saved the poet from a melancholy nihilism (and was recognized by Norwid himself as a chance for salvation) was his faith, rooted in hope. At this point, the author invokes S. Kierkegaard's reflections in Either/Or and identifies an expression of such hope in the phrase „the third word” (that is, faith) in the poem To rzecz ludzka [`It is human'] and in the motif of birds in the lithograph Solo.