Three Bards

The Three Bards (Polish: trzej wieszcze, IPA: [ˈtʂɛj ˈvjɛʂt͡ʂɛ]) are the national poets of Polish Romantic literature. The term Three Bards is almost exclusively used to denote Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849) and Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859). Of the three, Mickiewicz is considered the most, Krasiński the least, influential

Mickiewicz
Adam Mickiewicz
Słowacki
Juliusz Słowacki
Krasiński
Zygmunt Krasiński
The Three Bards of Polish Romantic literature

The Three Bards were thought not only to voice Polish national sentiments but to foresee the nation's future. They lived and worked in exile during the partitions of Poland, which had ended the existence of the Polish sovereign state. Their tragic poetical plays and epic poetry, written in the aftermath of the 1830 Uprising against Russian rule, revolved around the Polish struggle for independence from the three occupying foreign empires.

The concept of "the Three Bards" emerged in the second half of the 19th century and remains influential among scholars of Polish literature. At the same time, it has been criticized by some as anachronistic. As Krasiński's influence waned, some have suggested replacing him in the trinity with Cyprian Norwid, or adding Norwid or Stanisław Wyspiański as a Fourth Bard.

Meaning

The Polish expression "wieszcz" is often understood in the history of Polish literature as denoting a "poet-prophet" or "soothsayer".[1][2]: 8 [3] The Polish expression, often rendered in English as "bard" (in the "bard" sense of "a poet, especially an exalted national poet"[4]), was an approximation to the ancient Latin poeta vates ("poet-prophet") – the poet to whom the gods had granted the ability to see the future.[2]: 8 [3][5][6]

The Polish expression "the Three Bards" is applied almost exclusively to Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Juliusz Słowacki (1809–1849), and Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859). Of the three, Mickiewicz is considered the most, Krasiński the least, influential.[1][7][8][5]

Of the trio, Mickiewicz – the master of the epic and lyric – has been called the poet of the present; Krasiński – the prophet and seer – the poet who foretells the future; while Słowacki – the dramatist – was the panegyrist of the past.[9] Another scheme portrays Mickiewicz as the "positive voice of history", Słowacki as "the voice of the 'demonic' dark side of the fate of the Polish nation", and Krasiński as "the voice of Polish Catholicism".[1]

History

Imported to Poland around the 16th century along with many other Sarmatisms, the term wieszcz was initially applied to poets generically, some of them foreign like Homer, some native like Jan Kochanowski (sometimes called "the wieszcz of Czarnolas"[10])). However, with the 19th-century advent of Romanticism, the term began to be applied almost exclusively to the trio of Mickiewicz, Słowacki, and Krasiński.[3][8][5][6] Mickiewicz himself endorsed use of the term, in 1842 calling himself a wieszcz.[3] Though the three poets did not form a particular poetic group or movement, they all began to be seen as spiritual leaders of a nation deprived of its political freedom.[1][3][11]: 63  They also often adverted to folklore which linked the expression wieszcz to folk sages, such as Wernyhora, of legend and folk tale.[3][6]

The portrayal of Mickiewicz, Słowacki, and Krasiński as the three most important writers in Polish history can be traced to the 1860 expanded edition of Lesław Łukaszewicz's Rys dziejów literatury polskiej (Outline of the History of Polish Literature). This view was popularized in the Great Emigration period by other works on literary history (e.g., by Julian Bartoszewicz and Włodzimierz Spasowicz) and by succeeding decades of Polish textbooks, contributing to the establishment of a Polish literary canon.[1][3][12]

This idea has endured, though at times criticized by scholars (particularly, in the early 20th century, by Adolf Nowaczyński and Jan Nepomucen Miller) as anachronistic or otherwise incorrect. There has also been discussion concerning whether one of the Three Bards - particularly Krasiński - deserves to be one of the trio, and whether the trio should be expanded to include other poets.[3][5][6] Nonetheless, according to Kazimierz Wyka, since the mid-20th century the trio of Bards - Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Krasiński - has been recognized as historical and classic, and as such, immuatable, despite periodic criticisms and challenges.[3]

Fourth Bard
Norwid
Cyprian Norwid
Wyspiański
Stanisław Wyspiański
The contenders to the title of the Fourth Bard of the Polish literature

The early-20th-century rediscovery of the writings of Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821–1883) led some to call him a "fourth bard".[13][14]: 68  Unlike the writings of the Three Bards, Norwid's were not popular in his lifetime or for several decades thereafter. Consequently, according to Polish literary critics Przemysław Czapliński, Tamara Trojanowska, and Joanna Niżyńska, his work "remained isolated, unnoticed and unheeded" and "overshadowed by three earlier literary 'giants'" long celebrated both in exile and home", and hence Norwid failed to "affect the consciousness of his contemporaries to the same degree" as the Three Bards.[5][14]: 68  Some literary critics, however, have been so skeptical of the value of Krasiński's work as to consider Norwid a "third" rather than a "fourth" bard.[3][15][16]: 276 [17]: 8 

Other literary critics have nominated Stanisław Wyspiański (1869–1907) for the position of fourth bard.[18][19]: 147 [20]: 184  His 1901 play The Wedding is considered the last great classic of Polish drama, and Rochelle Heller Stone writes that this work "alone earned him the title of the fourth bard".[20]: 184 [21]: 14 

Other writers who have sometimes been called wieszcz include Józef Bohdan Zaleski, Seweryn Goszczyński, Wincenty Pol, and Kornel Ujejski.[5] Several more recent, 20th-century poets who have also been called bards (wieszcze) of modern Poland are Witold Gombrowicz and Czesław Miłosz (the latter, a Nobel laureate).[22]

In the visual arts, the term wieszcz has occasionally been applied to Jan Matejko and Artur Grottger as, respectively, the first and second Polish bards of painting, with either Józef Brandt or Henryk Siemiradzki most often being named as third bard.[3][5]

See also

Notes and references
  1. Lanoux, Andrea (2001). "Canonizing the Wieszcz: The Subjective Turn in Polish Literary Biography in the 1860s". The Slavic and East European Journal. 45 (4): 624–640. doi:10.2307/3086125. ISSN 0037-6752.
  2. Koropeckyj, Roman Robert. (1990). Re-creating the "wieszcz": Versions of the life of Adam Mickiewicz, 1828-1897. Harvard University ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
  3. Wyka, Kazimierz (1969). "wieszcz". Wielka Encyklopedia Powszechna (in Polish). Vol. 12. PWN. pp. 300–301.
  4. The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, Boston Houghton Mifflin Company, 1982, p. 157.
  5. Okoń, Waldemar (2019). "Henryk Siemiradzki i trzej wieszczowie" [Siemiradzki and the three bards]. Quart (in Polish). 54 (4): 3–81. English version
  6. "wieszcz". Encyklopedia PWN (in Polish). Retrieved 2023-05-01.
  7. Winkler, Markus (31 August 2018). Barbarian: Explorations of a Western Concept in Theory, Literature, and the Arts: Vol. I: From the Enlightenment to the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Springer. p. 202. ISBN 978-3-476-04485-3.
  8. Inglot, Mieczysław (2001). "Norwid wobec koncepcji trzech wieszczów". Czasopismo Zakładu Narodowego Imienia Ossolińskich. 12.
  9. Charles Dudley Warner; Lucia Isabella Gilbert Runkle; Hamilton Wright Mabie; George H. Warner (1902). Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern: A-Z. J. A. Hill & company. pp. 13508–13510. Retrieved 14 February 2011.
  10. Much as England's William Shakespeare is sometimes referred to as "the Bard of Avon".
  11. Król, Marcin (1998). Romantyzm: piekło i niebo Polaków (in Polish). Res Publica - Fundacja. ISBN 978-83-910975-1-9.
  12. Zawodniak, Mariusz (2001). ""Reakcyjny kanon", czyli trójca wieszczów w klasowej wizji romantyzmu (kartka z dziejów recepcji)". In Owczarz, Ewa; Smulski, Jerzy (eds.). Mickiewicz, Słowacki, Krasiński: romantyczne uwarunkowania i współczesne konteksty (in Polish). Mazowiecka Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczno-Pedagogiczna. ISBN 978-83-87222-20-8.
  13. "'Underappreciated' poet Norwid honoured on his 200th birthday with events across the country". Retrieved 24 September 2021.
  14. Trojanowska, Tamara; Niżyńska, Joanna; Czapliński, Przemysław (2018-01-01). Being Poland: A New History of Polish Literature and Culture since 1918. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4426-5018-3.
  15. Van Cant, Katrin (2009). "Historical Memory in Post-Communist Poland: Warsaw's Monuments after 1989". Studies in Slavic Cultures. 8: 90–119.
  16. Brogan, Terry V. F. (2021-04-13). The Princeton Handbook of Multicultural Poetries. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-22821-1.
  17. Rygielska, Małgorzata (2012). Przyboś czyta Norwida (in Polish). Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. ISBN 978-83-226-2066-3.
  18. Morawinska, Agnieszka (1987-01-01). "A VIEW FROM THE WINDOW*". Canadian-American Slavic Studies. 21 (2): 57–78. doi:10.1163/221023987X00178. ISSN 2210-2396.
  19. Cavanaugh, Jan (2000). Out Looking in: Early Modern Polish Art, 1890-1918. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-21190-2.
  20. Stephan, Halina (1984). Transcending the Absurd: Drama and Prose of Sławomir Mrożek. Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-420-0113-8.
  21. Stone, Rochelle Heller (2018-09-04). Boleslaw Lesmian: The Poet and His Poetry. Univ of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-30326-3.
  22. Holmgren, Beth (1989). "Witold Gombrowicz within the Wieszcz Tradition". The Slavic and East European Journal. 33 (4): 556–570. doi:10.2307/308286. ISSN 0037-6752.

Further reading
  • Markiewicz, Henryk (1984). Rodowód i losy mitu trzech wieszczów: pamięci Kazimierza Wyki [The origin and fate of the myth of the three bards: dedicated to the memory of Kazimierz Wyka] (in Polish). Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.