The mystic elements and cosmogonic landscape in The Silviludia by Mario Bettini in Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski’s poetic adaptation

Abstract

This article attempts to reinterpret the symbolist character of the adapted poetic cycle of M.K. Sarbiewski – Sylviludia dithyrambica (written 1637, published 1757) – and its relationship to the original work of Mario Bettini – Ludovicus, tragicum sylviludium (1612, published 1622). The new interpretation has given up the absolute method based on philological study and versification hitherto applied to explain the relationships between these two literary works, and consequently has rejected the conclusion which says that the work written by the Polish author is entirely repetitive, can be even considered a sort of plagiarism. This article has adopted anthropological and intertextual perspective to discuss the parallels between the two texts, their contexts, and aesthetic and ideological functions. It provides a wider range of possible interpretations of the genesis and semiotics of the Polish work. The author reveals cultural links between the Italian work adapted to Polish conditions and the European tradition woven around the Christian-national ethos of Europe and the idea of the king who takes up the ethos and constitutes its law and values on the territories under his control. In this historical and mythical space, the figure of ruler – in the Polish version King Vladislav IV – enters into relations of the cosmic harmony of beings and elements spinning around him. This approach brings poetic conceptualization and spiritualization of the visions of the nature of monistic qualities, and sacralization of the nature in the motherland and its territorial concretization. In this light, the Polish adaptation provides the affirmation and aestheticization of North-Eastern outskirts of Poland which adopted by Polish romantic poets (Adam Mickiewicz) became one of the models of poetry of the North – Lithuanian lakes, rivers and forests.