On “taking the bones away”: the body of Cyprian Norwid and Montmorency

Abstract

Taking into account the funeral scandal related to the poet’s burial, it can be rather difficult to study the fates of Norwid’s body or to put under scrutiny the whole problem area of the poetic “necrography” of the author of Promethidion as well of the broadly understood funeralism of the Great Emigration. In the sense presented above, the author follows the steps taken by Stanisław Rosiek, who focused his research on Adam Mickiewicz’s body and devoted him a monograph entitled Zwłoki Mickiewicza. Próba nekrografii poety [Mickiewicz’s body: an attempt at the poet’s necrography]. The necrographic myth related to Cyprian Norwid has never emerged and is very unlikely to develop in the future. Yet, it may be worthwhile to venture an opposite myth in Norwid studies, which can be described with the use of the metaphor proposed by Jean-Pierre Richard of “depriving culture of the bones of (its) fathers.” The article also takes a view of Norwid as “an émigré against the émigrés” in the sense of his opposition to the funeral propaganda of the supporters of the Czartoryski Family using the Montmorency cemetery, while Norwid contested their choice, acting as “Norwid of Montmartre.”