Greatness and Individuality in Czarne kwiaty

Abstract

Czarne kwiaty is prose of fact. But the article does not deal with its biographical connections; it treats Czarne kwiaty, instead, as a work of art, in which every element used is endowed with an artistic sense. The article deals more specifically with the creation of a character's greatness and individuality, one of the most important points in the poetics and semantics of the whole cycle. Analysis reveals that every motif and every single word of Czarne kwiaty have a function to perform, in that they contribute fragmentary information from which a full image of the character can be built up. Because of the nature of the piece, our observations have been arranged under four problem headings: 1) the narrator's general diagnoses concerning the artists' personalities, 2) location of the artists' dwellings as a means of characterization, 3) appearance of a dwelling vs. character, 4) descriptions of the heroes' appearance and behaviour.