The Philosophy of Man in Norwid's Vade-mecum

Abstract

In his early, though only recently published Rozważania o istocie człowieka Karol Wojtyła observed that the problem of man can be approached from two angles: from the point of view of his essence or from the point of view of his destiny. It seems that the same distinction can be applied in reflections on the conception of man contained in Norwid's Vade-mecum. We can find poems here which can be regarded as sui generis definitions of man, and ones which speak hauntingly about human destiny. The former include for instance Sfinks, Pielgrzym and Królestwo, the latter, „Ruszaj z Bogiem”, Larwa, Na zgon śp. Józefa Z.

As we look into the poems of the Vade-mecum most important for our topic, we discover their special logic that enables us to trace the way in which the truth about man unveils itself more and more fully. One can speak of a journey, with a peculiar dialectic of its own, which Norwid appears to invite us to complete by the very title of his work. The progression of the poet's investigation of the problem does not coincide with the sequence of the poems in the collection, yet it seems that our reconstruction of it, albeit arbitrary in part, does not contradict the whole of Norwid's anthropological conception contained in the Vade-mecum. It is this „wholeness” that is so astounding; it has enabled us in the present reconstruction of Norwid's anthropology to restrict ourselves to the Vade-mecum alone, without referring to his other texts.

The controlling idea of the Vade-mecum cycle, if not of Norwid's entire work, seems to be the postulate of truth, a hunger for truth and its alleviation. We have tried to follow „in his footsteps” along just the one path connected with the mystery of man. And as we travelled we were able to find ever deeper and deeper truths revealing themselves to us. Again, if we have been able to show any of them in this interpretation, that is not owing to ourselves, but to the illumination of Norwid's thought. We can be sure of one thing, though: what we have discovered in reading his texts is not a thing of the past, but turns out to be a permanent, universal truth, a truth valid tomorrow as well as today.