Studia Filologiczne UJK

Summary

It can be observed that most of interpretative possibilities of religious poetry by Mikolaj Sęp Szarzynski, one of the key figures of Polish literature, have been exhausted today. This implies the need to confront Szarzyński’s poetry with new questions, to try and situate it in previously unattempted contexts. It seems that modern philosophy is an interesting point of reference here. Janusz Stanisław Gruchała and Janusz Stanisław Pasierb indicate the similarities between the dilemmas of Sęp Szarzyński’s lyrical “I” and those experienced by a contemporary man. The article uses the interpretative possibilities put forward by the two authors, making the themes of twentieth-century existentialism pivotal for reading Szarzyński’s poetry.