Melancholy in the newest Polish poetry

The article deals with Polish poetry at the turn of the 21st century from the perspective of its important category such as melancholy. Before the era of “involvement” began in Polish literature, it had been dominated by the categories firmly rooted in the aesthetics of nostalgy, and melancholy in particular. It was the first reaction of Polish literature to the situation resulting from the axiological, epistemological and social threat typical of the culture of late capitalism. Due to the fact that melancholy is a primary psychological category, it adheres more to modernist than postmodernist thinking. Thus we are likely to find more modernist poetical melancholy than postmodernist one. As for the former, the most existentially convincing version of poetic melancholy is represented by the so-called “old masters”, such as Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz or Tadeusz Różewicz. Both poets do not strive to compensate for losses - like Czesław Milosz or Zbigniew Herbert. Różewicz’s poetry proves that melancholy does not necessarily have to be a “passive” category, it is primarily a tool for criticism of culture. On the other hand, thanks to melancholy, Rymkiewicz seriously revaluates his previous cultural worldview - it changes from the language of culture to the “language of nature”. Among the poets debuting after 1989, the most melancholic (this being this is the principle of all their works) are Marcin Świetlicki and Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki. The subject of Świetlicki is constantly and increasingly disappearing, he dissolves, reporting subsequent states of his “post-life”. The poetic world of Tkaczyszyn-Dycki is extremely monotonous, his subject is obsessed with the idea of death, illness and homelessness. Probably the most important poetic representative of Polish postmodernist melancholy is Andrzej Sosnowski. The traditionally experienced existential lack is replaced here by “lethal” philosophies of language - from Benjamin’s allegory to Derridean deconstruction - the lack is the “essence” of the language freed from essentiality.