The eagle from Rzecz o wolności słowa

The article attempts at explaining the motif of the eagle which appears in the final Song XIV in the poem Rzecz o wolności słowa. Previous scholars have unambiguously associated this symbolic vision with the apocalypse and with the figure of St John. The reading of Volney’s Travels through Syria and Egypt, supported by the source description of Palmyra’s ruins from Robert Wood’s The Ruines of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmor, in the Desert (1753), points rather to an archaeological source of Norwid’s imagery – the image of the ruins of the Palmyrene Temple of the Sun (Baal).