The origins of creation of Jerzy Paramonow’s figure in the cultural texts devoted to his actions

Abstract

Jerzy Paramonow is a criminal who remains a hero of an anonymous barnyard ballad in
the social imagination. For years he has been existing in a very narrow cultural circulation,
however, recently the creators of popular music have reminded the society of this persona.
Numerous versions of Paramonow’s history - regardless of the differences resulting from
the immanent aesthetics of the music groups and media – present the “unity of imagination”
which was the main source both for the anonymous ballad and its aestheticized version.
The most important include:
- anchoring the fictional pattern in songs of city news;
- aesthetics of violence typical for the fair music;
- creation of the main character in a similar manner as in the stories about brigands.
At the same time, embedding these cultural texts in the tradition of anonymous creations
of the past centuries impresses the durability of some specific ideas. Theoretically, they are
updated and adjusted to the changing social context of the audience, however, their essence
and function in literary communication remains unchanged.