Kilka myśli o romantyzmie i Słowackim z poskolonializmem w tle

The author argues that in order to find solid support for their identity as well as regain full agency and subjectivity, the Poles as a postcolonial nation need to critically rethink Romanti-cism as a period in which this identity was so powerfully shaped against the hegemonic dis-course of the colonizing power(s), primarily Russia and Prussia. Polish Romantic ideas and images became prevalent throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, remaining until today the stubborn and dominant patterns of national self-perception that transmit the stereotypes, complexes and resentments of the subjugated people. Such re-reading of works of Polish Romanticism is essential for liberating Polish contemporary discourse from victimist atti-tudes and polonocentric deformations and aberrations, such as messianism, which for decades accompanied the popular reception of Romantic poets, among them Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki. Instead of reading them in an “orthodox” way, with deep respect as if they were dogmas of national faith, as it happens in schools, these works call for a reinterpreta-tion. Such a reinterpretation must break ties with blind or facile acceptance of, and enter into discussion with, those poets’ views on the Polish-Lithuanian Republic, her downfall, her na- tions and ethnicities, and other issues widely discussed in Polish discourse. The author con-cludes with outlining six reasons why in such re-reading Słowacki’s oeuvre occupies a special place. Among these reasons are: 1) the ambivalence of being a Pole, so powerfully portrayed in Słowacki by means of unequivocality of his literary characters, 2) Słowacki’s penetrating diagnosis of Poles’ mimicry and resentment as peculiar traits of their colonial condition, 3) the need for reading Słowacki as part of the Polish discourse of “identity negotiation” be-tween the West and the East, 4) the emphasis in Słowacki on the Sarmatian ethos vs. Sarma-tian backwardness as the defining factor of Polish identity, 5) the ability of Słowacki, unlike those in his times, to recognize and respect the agency of “Others” (such as Ukrainians) and to capture and describe the phenomenon of “hybrid identity” of the inhabitants of the Eastern borderlands of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and 6) the orientalization of Słowacki’s work by Western scholarship.