The aim of the book is to provide an interpretation of late-baroque Polish religious poems in the context of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century metapoetical reflection and rhetoric, taking also into consideration the perspective of their ancient tradition.
The discussion is devoted to three basic issues: the first one is related to alterations within the concept of poetry as an imitative art, the second – to sources of poetic invention, and the last – to what, in reference to Aristotle’s Poetics (5.1449a) and subsequent metapoetical thought category of pathos, is called the aesthetics of pain.
The analysis of baroque books of poetics leads to recognition of internal tensions within the mimetic theory: these tensions exist between Aristotelian thought and Platonism which argues that the goal of poetry is to represent the inner nature of reality and not to portray a sensual image of the world, thus treating the verisimilitude and credibility only as an aid to rhetorical efficiency of a poem. The discussion of this opposition starts with a sentence by Simplikios, quoted by Vossius: “there are two kinds of illustration, the first one originates in the mind, and the second in the senses; the latter was emphasized by Aristotle and the former by Plato.”
This Platonic paradigm of thinking about poetry, represented by Masen, Tesauro and Ménestrier, is related to both rhetoric and theory of emblems. Evidence of such approach to poetry can be found in some of the analyzed late-baroque works whose authors show a particular taste for illustrative metaphors and allegories. The analysis also reveals the individual character of Juniewicz’s Refleksyje duchowne. There is a collision of two different imaging conventions in this work: the allegorical-and-metaphorical versus the realistic one which uses detailed description and hyperbolization. Genre scenes, expanded in the 1753 Vilnius edition of Reflexyje duchowne, resemble the poetics of Punkt honoru by Antoni Sebastian Dembowski (1749) – a poem that is commonly considered to be a manifestation of the forthcoming Enlightenment rather than being satirical and based on metaphorical forms of expression prevalent in Baka’s or Falęcki’s imaging.
Within the scope of the study of poetic invention, various inventive systems have been characterized and comparatively analyzed: the topoi of classical rhetoric, the categorial index by Tesauro and the one originated from Ramon Lull’s treatises of ars magna sciendi. Most attention is focused on 17th century modifications of the last of above-mentioned systems and attempts to reconcile it with Aristotelian logic.
It is assumed for the purposes this study that combinatorial structures may occur in a poetic text at the level of letters (as anagrams), words (e.g. as the so-called carmen infinitum and Proteus verses) or notions, i.e. in the inventive layer of the work. Most attention has been given to combinatorial inventive structures. Such structures can be found in Falęcki’s Wojsko serdecznych nowo rekrutowanych na większą chwałę Boską afektów. It becomes evident in enumerations, which correspond with a complete or near-complete list of Aristotelian categories or general subjects (subiecta generalia), and also in structures built on the principle of the Cartesian product of various sets of arguments. The phenomena inspired by ars combinatoria also include the tendency to use argumentative parallelism, quantitative (meta)argument and the modular technique that consists in constructing a speech from repetitive formulae.
The last part of the study focuses on the late-baroque predilection for the macabre and the comic that exceeds the Aristotelian norm of “deformity without pain.” Apart from poetics by Pontanus, Vossius, Krzyżkiewicz and Joseph de Jouvancy, the theoretical context for the analysis consists of both the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century treatises about the satire, whose authors associate the indignant tone of Juvenal’s satires with the sublime style of tragedy and the baroque theory of distinguished comic, represented by Baltasar Gracian or Emanuele Tesauro who condemn satiric malice and tomfoolery that does not respect the norm of “deformity without pain.”
In the course of further considerations different strategies of rhetorical attack on the virtual reader are analyzed, i.e. macabre imagery, abusive insults, for which Falęcki had a particular penchant, and, finally, grotesque degradations, implementing what in Tesauro’s nomenclature is called “mixed deformation.”
Macabre or abject images constantly accompany descriptions of agony and decay of the corpse. In this respect the late-baroque poets such as Juniewicz or Baka are continuators of a long tradition that has retained its vitality since the Middle Ages. It was taken to the extreme by Józef Baka in Uwagi śmierci niechybnej. The analysis allows to identify the ability to evoke catharsis in his poems: the reader is confronted with prerational experiences of fear and abjection. Hence, the discourse of Uwagi śmierci niechybnej establishes a sinister and repulsive mystery of death. The sanctity of the Christian God, expressed in formulas taken from the official language of religious poetry, determines the rational and ethical interpretation of Baka’s incantations. However, they themselves represent the opposite pole of sanctity, understood – as suggested by twentieth-century anthropology – as an archaic mysterium tremendum et fascinans. This conclusion allows one to view Uwagi śmierci niechybnej as an implementation of mimesis in its primordial meaning: as a ritual.
The poets’ rejection of humanist standards of appropriateness and urbanitas is accompanied by their disavowal of the authority of ancient tradition. It is – interpretable as a reference to the style of the Fathers of the Church – a gesture of rejection of pagan poetry and beauty in the name of persuasive effectiveness, a negation of the Platonic kalokagathia made not to sanctify the deformity but to express the truth.