Erring Poets. Tadeusz Różewicz and Boleslaw Leśmian

Abstract

 The purpose of this article is to analyze the relationship between the works of Tadeusz Różewicz and Bolesław Leśmian. In the article, I am interested in how Lesmian’s poetry influences Różewicz’s work. I trace Różewicz’s references to Leśmian’s work, appearing on various non-obvious levels and in equally non-obvious contexts : from his early poems, essays to his late works. Różewicz compares Leśmian primarily with Staff, seeing in this work great creative discipline and sensitivity to the sensuality of the world. First of all, I am interested in Różewicz’s poem Labyrinths, whose protagonist is Leśmian. Różewicz uses the metaphor of the labyrinth in the poem as a figure of poetic existence, doomed to contingency, with no illusory faith in the sense-making power of the poetic word. Różewicz reflects on the essence of poetic experience, which is marked by a rupture, an inability to settle. Thus, for Różewicz, Leśmian becomes a poet of defeat: poetry brings no salvation, testifies to our fragility and mortality.