The nocturnal side of the soul. "Wilkołak" ("The Werewolf") by Tomasz August Olizarowski: a forgotten epic poem

Abstract

The article attempts to explain the forgotten poem by Tomasz August Olizarowski, which represents the tenebrous wing of the poet’s imagination, the Werewolf, which is full of cruelty and wildness and bears the subtitle: Powieść. A. Olizarowskiego podług gminnych podań (A Novel by A. Olizarowski based on Folk Tales). The poem was published in the Lvov “Rozmaitości” magazine in 1835 and has never been published or printed since then. It was not even mentioned by Maria Janion
in her monumental symbolic biography of the vampire. For many years, the works by Olifir, a poet, playwright, literary critic, aphorist, and emigrant politician, have been remembered only by a small group of specialists and enthusiasts. Scattered or remaining in manuscripts, the poet’s work was most often treated as epigonic, unoriginal or poor. To the contrary, the topic of the first epic poem by T.A.O., which is analysed here, set in the core of the Romantic anthropology of the Nosferatu, is doubtlessly intriguing. Besides, the work is an interesting aesthetic proposal. In the analysed poem, Olizarowski chose the topos of the werewolf, which is difficult to elaborate on in the Romantic tradition. As a result, as I attempted to demonstrate in my dissertation, he created an intriguing, ambiguous image of that character, which is open to wide literary and anthropological contexts. As the author of the dissertation is convinced, the Werewolf is an interesting aesthetic and ideological proposal. The poet creates a successful alliance of the Romantic
frenzy with folk demonology, balancing between frenetic imagination and folkloric
fictionalisation. His werewolf is an interesting creation, not in spite of being embedded in the Romantic tradition, but precisely thanks to it.