King-Spirit According to Tymon Niesiołowski

Abstract

Juliusz Słowacki’s poem King-Spirit [Król-Duch] assaults the reader with images which appear in motion, in sudden fl ashes, and usually in the form of fragments taken out of the darkness. These visions are of a cinematic rather than a painterly nature. For this reason the 1909 cycle of pastel illustrations to King-Spirit by Tymon Niesiołowski (only two of which remain in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw) may seem to the modern viewer’s eye to be far removed from the text of the poem. But at the beginning of the 20th century, in his revolutionary monograph entitled Słowacki and the New Art [Słowacki i nowa sztuka] (published in 1902), Ignacy Matuszewski not only pointed to the equivalents of Słowacki’s late writings to be found in the visual arts, but also expressed his belief in the possibility of illustrating these texts. Niesiołowski’s cycle is thus a testimony to the contemporary interpretations of Słowacki. It demonstrates the changes that the style of reading Romantic texts went through during the century.