Lyricism as a Polemical Concept in Norwid, Brzozowski, and Sztuka I Narod (original) (raw)

2020, Świat Tekstów. Rocznik Słupski

Historically, the term "lyricism" designates a Romantic poet's inspired selfexpression. But in common language it also refers to a dream-like mood, in which the subjective origin is rather blurred. This ambiguity matters if one traces the usage of the concept in the aftermath of Romanticism. To be sure, the French neologism lyrisme had become ambiguous very soon after its appearance in the end of the 1820s. In what is one of the first evidences of the word's appearance, Alfred de Vigny used it to explain the need of a capacity of stylistically rising the intonation "up to the highest lyricism" (remonter jusqu'au lyrisme le plus haut) to render, in French, the freedom of Shakespearean language 1. Lyrisme, as Jean-Michel Maulpoix puts it, "addresses song without the support of music", or is supposed to be just the "equivalent of song within poetry" 2. It is, then, an agonal notion and represents the striving of Romantic poetry to embrace the other arts. The introduction of the term occurred, however, 1