Jacek Kaczmarski in Front of the Siberian Paintings by Jacek Malczewski

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to show the intertextual dialogue between a contemporary bard and a Young Poland’s painter. Four verbal-musical-vocal stories were selected for the analysis: Students Exile, Christmas Eve in Siberia, Poisoned Well, and Return from Siberia from the cycle Museum (1981); their comparison and interpretation serve to emphasize the dual voices of Kaczmarski’s texts: elements specific to ekphrase are underlined (reconstruction of the original painting scenario: the world represented, composition, colors), as well as the added meanings which allow the poet to view present events through the prism of the past. The singer looks in the Polish fate for what is inscribed in the communal experience of people: loneliness, suffering, entanglement in the machine of History, and defenselessness in the face of the judgments dictated by it. On the basis of these considerations, it can be concluded that by narrativizing images, Kaczmarski creatively decontextualizes their meanings and gives voice to the forgotten people silenced by History, and by mythologizing history, makes from past events a collection of parables about people and the community.