Norwid in Lenartowicz’s Polish Parnassus?

Abstract

The present sketch has a character of a historioliterary contribution. It describes a certain small episode from the history of acquaintance of two contemporary writers, poets, and at the same time magicians; an episode that is in a sense symbolic and because of that worth paying attention to in the continual historical dialogue (mainly on the plane of revaluation of the reasons and reception) that joins Teofil Lenartowicz and Cyprian Norwid.

What we are talking here about is Lenartowicz’s work that was never finished, and was called by him Polish Parnassus, Our Parnassus or Polish Muse. The work, or in fact a sculpture program, was worked out and partly put executed by the poet-sculptor in various materials, probably in the years 1881-1883, along with the various forms of popularizing Polish literature he undertook in Italy. An iconographic documentation, and photos of people the artist intended to include in the national Pantheon (among them Brodziński, Zaleski, Mickiewicz, Krasiński) was the main model basis for him. Referring to this project Lenartowicz wrote in a letter to Seweryna Duchińska on 16 December 1882: ‘Madam, if you have your photo in profile, as well as that of Cyprian Norwid, please send them to me, as I need them for my Parnassus’. It is not known if Duchińska sent the photo or if Lenartowicz did anything else about his project. The mention is the only trace of the intention to include Norwid in the composition that was supposed to be an apotheosis of the Romantic Polish literature, and in this way, of recognizing the importance of the forgotten poet.