“Patch and Diamond.” Norwid, Hopkins, Dickinson and Their New Poetics

The above-mentioned poets are considered to be great innovators in the histories of their respective literary traditions. There are numerous volumes of critical commentaries on their works and their place within modernism. The aim of this paper is not to bring to the fore similarities of the changeable fortunes of their lives and oeuvres. It has already been noted in scholarly investigations that their poetry emerged on the literary map after many years of neglect and served as a sign of aesthetic avant-gardism. My main objective will be to examine how Norwid’s interest in the realm of seemingly banal objects can be contextualized within a broader horizon opened by such poets as Hopkins and Dickinson, who discovered surprisingly fresh, and previously inconceivable, ways of representing their encounter with reality.