Poetry after the end of the world: Andrzej Sosnowski’s Sylwetki i cienie

The article focuses on the attempt to write out the notion of the end of the world as inherent in Andrzej Sosnowski’s latest book of poems. The poet shows that apocalyptic narrations are a mythical discourse that brings down the complex process of man’s existence to a simplifi ed binary formula, reducing being in the world to a life – death dichotomy. The aim of poetry in such a reality is to shake the cliché-ridden language into greater evocative potential so as to enliven it. In Sylwetki i cienie, the function of poetry in late modernity enters the spotlight: notional binaries are broken apart, replaced by a nuanced space of linguistic game

The article focuses on the attempt to write out the notion of the end of the world as inherent in Andrzej Sosnowski’s latest book of poems. The poet shows that apocalyptic narrations are a mythical discourse that brings down the complex process of man’s existence to a simplifi ed binary formula, reducing being in the world to a life – death dichotomy. The aim of poetry in such a reality is to shake the cliché-ridden language into greater evocative potential so as to enliven it. In Sylwetki i cienie, the function of poetry in late modernity enters the spotlight: notional binaries are broken apart, replaced by a nuanced space of linguistic game