Donkiszoci, wygnańcy i emisariusze trwania - o obrazie romantyzmu u Mieczysława Porębskiego i romantyzmie jako obrazie współczesności

What vision of Romanticism would be most precious for us today, and correspond to challengesput up by modernity? In what way does Romanticism situate itself in the light of diagnosesthat postmodernism brought? The author makes an attempt at answering these questions, referringto findings and personal reflections expressed by Mieczysław Porębski (b. 1921, a historian and art critic, as well as a few new interpretations of Romanticism, made recently by historiansof literature. The leading axis of the sketch are figures of Don Quixote, exile and emissary thatare vital in Porębski’s thinking about the „state of collective imagination” being discussed here,as well as very important, as the author believes, for this image of Romanticism that can be noticedon the horizon of postmodernism. The crux of the matter seems a concrete and individualconfrontation with fate and history passage, and looking for spiritual roots that turn out to bethe termination point, too, namely, not a clear-cut aim, but a chance for finding oneself in eternalduration