Reading Wyspiański: [Rev. Iwona E. Rusek, Stanisław Wyspiański: Myth – Tradition – History, Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance Publishing House, 2024, 479 pp.]

Abstract

The article is a comprehensive critical review of Iwona E. Rusek’s monograph Stanisław Wyspiański. Mit – tradycja – historia (Warsaw 2024), published within the series “Literature and Memory” under the honorary patronage of the President of Poland. The Author highlights the threefold aim of Rusek’s work – didactic, popularizing, and scholarly – emphasizing its value for students, teachers, and scholars of Polish literature. Rusek examines three key dramas by Wyspiański: Wesele, Warszawianka, and Noc listopadowa, each approached with different methodological emphases. While Wesele is treated as a synthesis of symbolic interpretations rooted in tradition and enriched by visual and critical sources, Warszawianka is analyzed through an independent lens, with a focus on psychological and gender dynamics. The chapter on Noc listopadowa offers a deeply symbolic reading grounded in Eleusinian mystery rites and Christian eschatology, culminating in the myth of death and rebirth. Jakiel praises Rusek’s interpretative restraint and clarity, noting that her work, though selective in its use of secondary literature, effectively stimulates deeper engagement with Wyspiański’s mythopoetic dramaturgy.