Studia Filologiczne UJK

Summary

This article discusses the relationship between a painting and a poetic text that it inspired, using as an example one of numerous poems by Lucjan Rydel inspired by Jacek Malczewski’s masterpieces. The poem has no title; it starts with the words “On a beaming morning, golden with sunlight” and it refers to the painting with an undetermined title presenting an older person with a butterfly and a young faun. Both works, Rydel’s poem and Malczewski’s painting, are ambiguous in their message. They define man as a mortal being living in illusions, torn between heaven and earth and dependent on the vagaries of fortune. Thus it seems that the poem leads to similar reflections as a contemplation of the painting does. Malczewski’s masterpiece, however, is more complex. It induces a certain anxiety concerning human destiny; it asks an eloquent question about the relation between the spirit and body, life and death as well as about the secrets of happiness, eternity and liberation.