„…i pogrążyć się w cichą otchłań zapomnienia…”. Wiersze Przerwy-Tetmajera w pieśni artystycznej Karłowicza i Szymanowskiego. Część 1: Interpretacje tekstów

Abstrakt

The present article constitutes the first part of the planned two-part study. The entire work is aimed at presenting a coherent and complete picture of the relationship between music and lyrics in the art song of Karłowicz and Szymanowski, which was created on the basis of Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer’s poetic texts. The article featured in this issue is concerned with an attempt to interpret Przerwa-Tetmajer’s texts, which stimulated the imagination of the two previously mentioned composers. The author assumes that the poem, which is eventually musicalized, is an appropriate starting point for the analysis of the songs. In this context, it is important to answer the question: “Which of its features and characteristics, both formal and ideological, made it interesting to the composer?” The article opens with a brief outline of Tetmajer’s biography, which is followed by an explanation as to why he became the ideological exponent of the Young Poland generation. The works of the leading representative of the Young Poland movement are presented in the context of the most important “isms” of the period: symbolism, impressionism, the Decadent movement, Parnassianism and Art Nouveau. The author of the article points to the relationship between symbolism and the idealistic philosophy characteristic of Plato and Plotinus and the philosophy of Hartmann and Schopenhauer, as well as to its presence in the Western philosophical thought. He also observes that the decadent worldview was perfectly complemented by Przerwa-Tetmajer’s works. No one spoke of the vacuum, void, longing, meaninglessness of life, powerlessness, pessimism, discouragement, lack of ideals and approaching downfall quite like Tetmajer, who often used aquatic metaphors to convey these ideas. In the latter part of the article, the author draws attention to the fact that the language of the symbolists made use of the “achievements” of the decadents. These two world views often exploited the same motifs. The fundamental difference lies in interpreting said motifs in a positive or negative way. The article closes with a reflection on the subject of Tetmajer’s impressionism. Describing objects, the poet made references to their colour. The world of his poetry was often hazy, bathed in diverse colours and light that comes from different angles. The sounds were uncertain, impermanent, fleeting. He was motivated by the desire to capture an impression, render the changeable properties of an object. What is significant is that these properties could only be discerned by him and only a single time. Interpreted in this way, Tetmajer’s poetry, as the author emphasizes in the summary, provides the foundation that is essential to fully understanding the ideas expressed in its musical adaptations by Mieczysław Karłowicz and Karol Szymanowski.