Because Polish romantic literature came to flower in the looming shadow of a state overrun by its imperial neighbors, this body of writing is frequently described as a “cocktail of messianic self-glorification and [...] colonial inferiority complex” (Bill 2018, 49). Such reductive, and even orientalizing, labels effectively obscure the conceptual complexity and artistic sophistication of Polish romantics. Like romantic writers elsewhere in Europe, they embraced an intoxicating idea of a new beginning that was bound up with aesthetic skirmishes and full-pitched battles against entrenched habits of thought and perception.
Although their primary genre was the lyric poem, many of the Polish romantics were drawn to drama a…
3415 words
Citation: Filipowicz, Halina. "Dziady, part 4". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 July 2019 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=33993, accessed 18 April 2024.]
