BOLESŁAW LEŚMIAN’S LYRICAL PROSE AND ITS IMAGINED WORLDS: „LEGENDY TĘSKNOTY" [„LEGENDS OF LONGING"]

Abstract

The article examines Bolesław Leśmian’s poetic narratives published in the series Legendy tęsknoty [Legends of Longing]. The study seeks to interpret Leśmian’s lesser-known works with reference to Gilbert Durand’s and Gaston Bachelard’s anthropological studies on the creative imagination. The analysis involves identifying the imaginary figures that form the structural systems of a literary work and tracing how they function in the text, and how they have been transformed in the author’s imagination. Examining the imagined world presented in the Legendy tęsknoty series leads to the conclusion that Bolesław Leśmian draws upon old narratives (archaic epics, myths, and fairy tales), in which the imaginary world is schizomorphic (antagonistic images are organized according to the principle of diairesis). Leśmian’s imagination creatively modifies the symbolic-mythical cultural code typical of the schizomorphic imagination. The application of Durand’s anthropological structures of the imaginary helps readers notice that what serves in Leśmian’s texts as a principle for organizing images, which function as figures of suffering, is perseveration. The recurrence of the images of suffering intensifies despair, and the protagonists of his poetic narratives embody the anthropological model of homo patiens. All these artistic devices show the tragic anthropology of the characters and give a specific effect: the aesthetic category of sadness.