Anna Dziembowska’s "The issue of evil in Słowacki". Contribution to the explanation of cruelty in "The Spirit-King"

Abstract

The obsession with bodily decomposition, the destruction of matter, life manifested in the images of rotting, dead bodies, vermin, brutal murders and crimes, resulting from the existence in the world of evil, are within the imagination and stylistic expression of many of
Słowacki’s works. After the transfiguration of the poet these horrors of the destruction of matter do not disappear from his works, on the contrary, they are multiplied, compounded. The procession of the SpiritsKings through history is shown here as painful, marked by suffering. Hence there are so many horrors here, ugliness, death – evil. How do we explain its existence in the world of Słowacki? It has been written about several times in an attempt to explicate the poet’s philosophy of Genesis, although it never seems quite complete. In detail, the issue of evil, both in the works of the young Słowacki, and those written after the transfiguration, was taken up at the beginning of the last century by unknown philosopher Anna Dziembowska. Her forgotten dissertation entitled "The problem of evil in Słowacki". On the backdrop of the historical outline of the problem, published in 1929 in Poznań, as a reprint of Volume III of the Works of the Philosophical Commission of 1927, is a valuable, if not indispensable contribution to the attempt to explicate cruelty in "the Spirit-King". Also because the author makes Słowacki’s philosophy of Genesis, as recorded in his mystical writings, the subject of philosophical study. This essay attempts to present the most important theses contained in this dissertation, against the background of recent findings concerning the aesthetics of Słowacki’s late works.