The Gothic imagery of an emigrant. A reflection on the poetry by Czes?aw Mi?osz

Abstract

Reader of philosophers and of the vast tradition of world poetry, the emigrant Polish poet Czes?aw Mi?osz seeks in his work the meaning of the representation, challenging the different forms of linguistic and existential nihilism. Calling into question western formalist tendencies, as well as romantic literary heritage, the Polish poet turns in some of his texts to the elements of Gothic convention. It is surprising to discover that it is precisely the elements of Gothic poetics, generally devalued by critical discourse, that allow to overcome the characteristic dichotomies of extraterritorial literature. If the emigrant subjectivity does not rarely re-update the elements of romantic poetics and of the Orientalism, the use of the elements of the Gothic Convention allows, on the contrary, the valorization of the experience of deterritorialization. Focused on affective short memory and the nomadism, the deterritorialization seeks to negotiate the verticality of experience and a reconfiguration of subjective space in the sense that it values the Dionysian impulse.