English version below
Dziady: dzieło-proces
ENG
Dziady: a work in progress
In his History of Polish Literature, Czesław Miłosz described Dziady as a “developing work”. The specific processuality of the drama can be seen on several levels. The first concerns Mickiewicz’s biography and the evolution of his creative path – behind the different parts of Dziady there are different experiences, the figure of a poet-pilgrim travelling through Europe. The work is in constant motion, growing (even after the author’s death) with new editions and arrangements, being transformed with the different staging projects and directorial arrangements of the text.
Mickiewicz’s correspondence and the testimonies of those around him suggest that the most intensive acceleration of the creative process accompanied the writing of the third part of Dziady. Mickiewicz expressed this in two letters sent from Dresden, dated 29 April 1932. In a letter to Józef Grabowski, he describes himself as a “Schreibmaschine” that had not put the pen down for weeks. Whereas in his correspondence to his brother Franciszek, he expressed satisfaction with his own writing discipline:
“I've been so busy for the past few weeks that I've barely had time to shave my beard. I have written so much that the number of poems put together during this month equals a third, or perhaps half, of everything I have published so far. I have not yet finished everything I have started; until I have finished, I will probably stay in Dresden. I am in good health, and quite cheerful and, as far as one can be, happy, in my work”.
This extremely fruitful time in the poet’s work finds its sublimation in the legend of the Great Improvisation. The nocturnal furor poeticus was recorded by Edward Odyniec, who visited Mickiewicz the following day and found him exhausted, extremely pale, sleeping on the floor “on a mattress pulled off the bed onto the ground”, “half-dressed”. According to the testimony of the poet’s roommate Ludwik Orpiszewski, Mickiewicz wrote the Improvisation “loudly” (i.e. shouted), which woke Orpiszewski up in the middle of the night.