“Sacred, great and difficult work”. Comments on the Genological Contexts of Wacław Potocki’s Nowy zaciąg

In this paper, an attempt is undertaken to determine the genre of Wacław Potocki’s Nowy zaciąg, a meditative poem about the Passion of Christ, one of the numerous works that belong to the seventeenth-century biblical epic. In the literature on the subject, this poem is traditionally called a “messiad” or “biblical epic”, but in the epic tradition, there are no models for such a structure, stylistic and rhetorical conventions of narrative, and the way in which the epic action is developed in this work. The aim of this study is, therefore, to prove that classifying Nowy zaciąg as an epic is a mistake and to indicate the appropriate literary frame of reference, that is the group of texts which significantly influenced Potocki’s poetic thinking about the Passion of Christ. This referential frame consists of texts that represent not only meditative literature but also ecclesiastical oratory prose. 

The Structure of Orlando furioso—Between Epic and Chivalric Romance

The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to show coherence within the thematic frame of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and on the other, to give consideration to fragments commonly considered minor and only complementary. Roncaccia based his work both on sixteenth-century studies of Ariosto and on contemporary research. Scholars who study Ariosto have always been challenged by the issue of the narrative and structural unity of Orlando Furioso. Both contradictory patterns can be reduced to images of a complex maze of events and a complete structure built with architectonical precision. The still current opposition between the two different manners of interpretation can be considered in relation to the two fragments of the chivalric narrative that intertwine in Orlando Furioso: the adventure genre related to the Breton Arthurian cycle and the epic genre that undertakes the subject of the Carolingian Wars. This tendency to duality—clear at the narrative plane can be overcome at the macrotext level. Roncaccia shows how the four “movements” alternately play a role in the overall structure of the poem (as if in a symphony): two of them are characterised by the dispersion of motifs characteristic of romance, while the other two concentrate them, as if in an epic poem. By virtue of this original device, Ariosto combines the two genres, proportioning them depending on his compositional intentions.

In the first part of the paper, Roncaccia briefly reconstructs the old perspective of critical studies on Ariosto, which concerned the structure and coherence of the poem. In the second part, the twentieth-century studies on the structure of the poem are quoted, starting with the research of Attilio Momigliano, who divided the poem into four parts and outlined its narrative and thematic macrostructure. Roncaccia develops this rarely considered and somewhat sketchy division proposed by Momigliano, demonstrating how the four parts form pairs that are interconnected with each other by contrasts or analogies. In this part, Roncaccia also reflects on the use of the category of epics and romance in the context of Orlando Furioso. In sections three to six, the author carries out a detailed analysis of the four previously indicated parts of the poem. In the last, seventh section of the study, inspired by today’s research on the structure of the poem, the author proposes an entropic chart: the dynamic given to the action is dispersed in numerous narrative motifs due to extreme acceleration, in which various time planes are intertwined, and then it is gradually concentrated in an isochronous flow leading to the end of the poem. Unlike the traditional interpretations of Orlando Furioso, which show consistency of only two or three main thematic motifs, the proposed interpretation of the poem indicates the possibility of inscribing minor motifs into a general and coherent thematic outline. 

Przeł. Katarzyna Skórska

Przekład artykułu został sfinansowany ze środków Université de Lausanne.

God’s Art and Its Meta-Poetic Character in Dante’s Divine Comedy

In this study, Maria Maślanka-Soro discusses the problem of meta-poetic themes in the Divine Comedy, focusing in particular on Dante’s message about his own work in connection with the topos of Deus Artifex popular in the Middle Ages. The aim is to read this message, referring to the relationship between word and image, in the context of the impression caused by the sight of rock reliefs on the terrace of the proud in the Purgatorio, where the poet, presenting and imitating the art of God, in fact shows the mastery of his own art. In other words, Dante suggests an analogy between the reliefs carved with the “hand” of God, which are vibrant with life and meaningfully called visibile parlare (“visible speech”), and the earthly and extra-terrestrial reality presented in the Divine Comedywith equally great power of expression. The relationship between God’s art and Dante’s art is presented as part of a more general reflection on the analogy that exists between nature, which is the expression of divine art, and the artistic creation of man. This analogy is based on a similar modus operandi, that is giving the matter a proper form, both by nature, which imitates the creative power of the Prime Mover, and by the artist. The issues outlined above are analysed in here on the basis of relevant fragments of Dante’s poem, especially songs X and XII of Purgatorio and some fragments of Paradiso, where the role of Deus Artifex seems to be particularly emphasised. It should be noted that while there are various analyses of songs X and XII of Purgatorio, none of them stops at the meta-poetic function of bas-reliefs on the terrace of the proud. 

The paper begins with a brief reminder of the Deus Artifex topos in mediaeval culture and especially in the Divine Comedy, where this metaphor is enriched with an element of God’s love for his own work. Then, the different shades of meaning of the concept of arte in the Divine Comedy and the hierarchical relationship between God, nature, and art are briefly discussed. Next, the considerations focus on the concept of arte limited to artistic creativity sensu stricto, which takes place on the terrace of the proud. There, penitents contemplate the examples of humility and pride carved on the walls and on the rock path, which are the perfect work of God-the Artist, a work of miniature size when compared to its macroscopic version, which is the Universe created by him. Further analysis leads to the conclusion that the extremely suggestive depiction of the scenes on reliefs, vibrant with life and involving almost all the senses of the viewer, acquires a meta-poetic character in relation to the analogically “living” and “real” episodes presented by Dante in his great poem. The poet implicitly expresses the view that in the works of every great artist, that is, in his understanding, an artist who derives heavenly inspiration, the distance between art and life is blurred.    

The Legend of the Seven Infants of Lara. A Commentary and Translation

The text published in this issue has two parts: a critical apparatus consisting of the introduction and footnotes, and a translation into Polish of the prose version of the Legend of the Seven Infants of Lara from manuscript E2 of Estoria de Espanna by Alfonso X the Wise. The critical part contains a discussion of three main research problems, which include the historicity of events and characters, potential sources of inspiration for the authors of subsequent variants of the Legend, and the relationship between these variants. Here we also find the characteristics of the source text of the translation, i.e. the royal chronicle mentioned above. The discussion of historical events and characters appearing in the legend is based on a comparative analysis of the canonical study of the subject by Ramón Manéndez Pidal included in the monograph La leyenda de los Infantes de Lara (3rd edition, 1971), as well as historical sources and the latest studies by Spanish and foreign scholars, often critical of Pidal’s research. Potential influences on the shape of the legend, originating mainly from the French epic, have been indicated for each of the threads, the content of which brings to mind associations with the texts written earlier. The relationship between the different variants of the legend is explained by the evolution of the text from the oldest song of an informative character (Spanish canto noticiero), to first and second epic songs, which have not survived to date, to the prose versions in the chronicles Estoria de Espanna and Crónica de 1344 by Pedro Alfonso, Count de Barcelos. The description of the different variants is complemented by a tabular summary of the most important differences between the prose versions of the legend from both chronicles. 

The translation of the chapters of Estoria de Espanna containing the story of seven infants is based on a variant of the chronicle called Versión amplificada de 1289 (Extended Version from 1289), which belongs to the so-called post-Alfonsian chronicles and was written after the death of Alfonso X, during the reign of his son, Sancho IV the Brave. It is the oldest preserved version of the  Legend of the Seven Infants of Lara, which is the basis for the later variants. The source for the translation is manuscript E2 (MS X-I-4, Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo, El Escorial, Madrid) known in its two modern editions: Primera Crónica General de España, edited by Ramón Menédez Pidal, and Estoria de Espanna Digital, an online edition.