Public lecture "From Pan Tadeusz to Italian lyrics of Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer. Reminiscences of the romantic landscape in poetry and art at the turn of the 19th and 20th century."

prof. dr hab. Justyna Bajda
Positivism and Young Poland Literary History Institute
Polish Philology Department
University of Wrocław

Almost whole Polish literature, but also art (mostly paintings) of the second half of the 19^th century were marked by a trace of romantic spirituality and emotionality. Traces of poetic and visual imagination of Adam Mickiewicz, that famous “coloring with words”, about which Stanisław Witkiewicz wrote in the context of Pan Tadeusz, can be found in the works of a number of poets and painters at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th century. The idea of this lecture is to present how the generation of Young Poland artists was inspired by Mickiewicz’s imagination, enriched with poetics of more recent movements: impressionism, symbolism or expressionism. The subject concentrates on presenting the landscape, which – both in its realistic and mental perspective (famous l’état d’âme) – was of a particular significance for both the generation of romantics, and the neo-romantics.