The Birth of “Lucifer”: The Poetic "Caucasus" of Tadeusz Miciński

Abstract

The author of this study analyzes the poetic cycle of the distinguished Polish lyric poet Tadeusz Miciński (1873–1918). The cycle, consisting of 19 poems titled Caucasus, was published in 1903 in the magazine Ateneum and later, after years of fragmentation, incorporated into the novel Nietota. The Secret Book of the Tatras (Kraków 1910). The interpreter questions what Miciński’s Caucasus represents against the backdrop of the Polish tradition of Caucasus portrayals. Exile to the Caucasus, forced enlistment into the Tsarist army, and Polish literature emerging from and upon return from the Caucasus have created a specific image of it: mountains boiling with history, exotic mountains. The Caucasus also appears in Polish ethnogenetic myths and in Messianism. Meanwhile, for Miciński, it serves as a symbol, metaphor, and metonymy of an internal striving for transformation. As a result, an internally dialectical “I” is formed, composed of human, luciferian, and divine elements. One of the few Caucasian accents here is the invocation of Shota Rustaveli, the Georgian poet, author of The Knight in the Tiger’s Skin, who is depicted as the “melancholic” singer of Queen Tamar. In the context of this image, an unsorrowful, vital trinitarian subject emerges in the lyrics, who, within the cycle-constellation code, addresses Lucifer with “I will go there.” The evolution of Miciński’s subject leads him, in 1913, to active engagement in history-making once again.